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MUSC colleagues remember astronaut David Brown His was a brief, one-year stop at MUSC, a stay long enough for Capt. David Brown to serve part of his residency at the Family Practice Center on his way to heights of achievement only a select few reach.    But for those he touched 20 years ago, faded memories suddenly burst full color as NASA's Columbia shuttle ripped apart on re-entry Saturday following an otherwise successful 16-day mission. Brown was an STS-107 mission specialist conducting medical and space science experiments.    Sandra Harley Counts remembers then Dr. Brown as a team member in the Calhoun Street facility. His easy demeanor and fun personality sparked several Lowcountry friendships among fellow residents, practitioners and individuals.    Counts, who graduated with a pharmacy doctorate, and is a pharmacy faculty member at Anderson Family Practice Center, recalls the road trip to Cape Canaveral, Fla., that she, Brown and a few others organized to watch a scheduled NASA space shuttle launch.    “I guess David's interest in space was there even as he was working his internship year,” Counts said.    Fellow Mount Pleasant physician Bill Anderson, M.D., was a member of Capt. Brown's residency class.   “It was something he always wanted to do. He just loved flying,” said Anderson, in a Post and Courier interview. “He came pretty close to becoming a family practitioner, but he wanted to take a different path in life.”    Both Anderson and Counts lost track of their friend after he left MUSC to join the U.S. Navy to become a flight surgeon and a carrier-based aviator before being accepted to NASA's astronaut corps in April 1996.    “I had no idea his life had taken him from watching a shuttle take-off during a free weekend during residency in 1982 to actually working with NASA and being chosen as one of the astronauts,” Counts said. “My memories of David are of a fun, relaxed and adventuresome person. My condolences go to is family and friends and all those who knew and worked with him along the way.”   Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.