I sometimes catch myself looking up at the moon, remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage, thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home. I look up at the moon, and wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be? (Jim Lovell)
Even if you’re not an old fart like me or a space-buff you’ve probably heard of Jim Lovell. The movie Apollo 13 runs on cable periodically so think ‘the Tom Hanks character.’ As someone who grew up absorbing everything I could learn about Mercury, Gemini and ultimately Apollo I can assure you very little license was taken with actual events in the movie. Most of what you see is how it really happened. Lovell, who went into space four times (twice on Gemini missions in Earth Orbit and twice to the moon) was for a time the record holder for time spent in and miles travelled in space. That was before crewed orbiting space stations rewrote the rules.
Lovell was more than an astronaut however. Much more. There’s a reason I chose a title pic not of him wearing an Apollo space suit but with his wife. Jim and Marylin Lovell were high school sweethearts who stuck together through it all. He’s one of very few astronauts from that era that didn’t wind up divorced from the wife that supported him and tended to all the family stuff the job took them away from. But the Lovell’s endured. There’s a mountain on the moon he got named for Marylin but if he missed so much family stuff during his years with NASA he did his best to make up for it after retiring from it and the Navy.
Jim worked various executive jobs and the Lovell’s wound up settling in a huge house in the suburbs – Lake Forest Illinois. The kids would grow up and move out but when they got married they went back and lived at mom & dad’s place for a while. Same when they had kids of their own. Marylin loved it, and I’m sure part of it was Jim being able to as a grandparent experience so much of what he missed out on. And them sharing it together. Marylin’s health faded and she passed away at age 93 in a facility in Lake Forest with Jim and much of the family at her side. Now, after 97 years he is gone too.
But what a life he led! A graduate of the Naval Academy (class of 1952) and became a Naval Aviator. He spent much of the 1950s flying fighters including deployments to the Pacific. However he was more than a “stick and rudder man.” He was also a first class engineer and was the Navy guy who managed its involvement in the development and use of the venerable F-4 Phantom. He also worked on development of rocket fuels and engines. Then he went to Pax River (the Navy’s version of Edwards AFB) to qualify as a test pilot, graduating at the top of his class.
Lovell didn’t become one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts due to an enhanced level of biliruben in all those medical tests. Clearly he was strongly considered because once NASA got us into space it was clear we’d need a bunch more astronauts. He was chosen to be one of the “New Nine” or “Next Nine” as the press would call them. His two seminal Gemini missions made him the most travelled in space person. BEFORE Project Apollo. His star was bright and he was selected for one of the early crewed missions which increased his odds of becoming one of the first, if not THE first to set foot on the moon. (the crew rotation system would take too long to explain)
A series of setbacks including but not limited to the fire that took the lives of the Apollo 1 crew led to some serious reshuffling at NASA. The crews of both Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 were well into training but the Lunar Module was well behind schedule. That led to Frank Borman’s and Jim McDiviett’s crews “swapping missions” and Lovell being on that first flight of man beyond the earth’s orbit. It was a profound Christmas Eve in 1968. That live broadcast from lunar orbit. I’m still filled with awe and wonder thinking about it.
When NASA got squirrelly about sending Al Shepard back into space as Commander of an Apollo mission (he’d wind up commanding #14) Lovell and his crew were assigned to the ill-fated Apollo 13. Through it all Lovell kept his cool and him and his crewmates working with the NASA folks back in Houston (and elsewhere) to against great odds make it home. They did. While as I noted Lovell went on to live a more normal life he kept in touch with goings on at NASA. And yes, he was an advisor to Ron Howard (and Hanks and others) during the filming of the Apollo 13 movie.
It close with Hanks/Lovell narrating a bit, and that quote I started with. It’s a shame that Lovell didn’t live long enough to see people walk on the moon again. Even without Trump’s and then Musk’s mucking around we are still several years (at least) away. But Lovell’s desire is a worthy one. He lived as full a life as a person can have. A life of service to his country and his family. Any one of his extraordinary achievements would set a person apart. He had many. Yet he remained humble.
It’s so easy to look at the likes of Trump and his minions and despair. However at the moment we have a chance to reflect on the fact that someone from average beginnins could accomplish so much in a single lifetime. I want to think about THAT this weekend. Re-watch certain episodes (or parts of episodes) of the mine series From the Earth To the Moon, and Apollo 13 too. Somewhere we have other Jim Lovells. I take comfort in that.
And, speaking of that mini-series the episode 1968 jumps to mind. It was a bad, even cataclysmic year almost from the get-go. The Tet Offensive and then the siege at Khe Sanh. Then the assassinations of MLK and RFK. Then the awful spectacle of the Democratic Convention. Those weren’t the only riots that year either. As Frank Borman’s wife asked him regarding RFK the question was ‘what is going so wrong this year?’ As I’ve noted for all that had happened there was plenty of awful yet to come.
Then came the voyage of Apollo 8 which Jim Lovell was part of. For all that had happened he and his crewmates did something so marvelous that we realized there is reason to hope for the future. I don’t know we have an Apollo 8 moment on the horizon but for those of us old enough to remember those times I urge you to tell younger folks about Lovell. That no matter how much seems to be going wrong, somehow something happens that allows us to dream of a better tomorrow.
for now I offer the old tribute to Jim Lovell: “Fair winds and following seas.”
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I vividly remember that Christmas Eve in 1968! I had just graduated from the University of Denver and I was working in a suburb there. My sister lived in Lamar, Colorado, and I was driving down to be with her family and my parents who drove in from their home in Las Vegas, Nevada. I was twenty-some and impressed with myself, but all alone on that dark Colorado highway, I listened to Walter Cronkite describe the awe inspiring feat of those astronauts. Suddenly, there was something greater than my little life. Greater than all of us. I was mesmerized. I’ll never forget it!
I was only eleven at the time. Just a midwestern small-town kid who immersed himself in the space race from the time I could remember. My mom told me that even before I was old enough to have memories I was on her lap during missions. And she, like other parents kept me out of school on launch days growing up. To her it was history she wanted me to be able to say I saw from the beginning even I wasn’t quite old enough to remember the initial missions. Wally Schira’s flight was the fist of which I have distinct, if few memories. Oddly enough the one that stands out was from that night when my dad got home. Mom was pretty upset with him about chuckling over the “Turtle” exchange which I of course knew nothing about. So dad actually explained to me what the Turtle joke was. For those who don’t know “members” would ask each other in a polite company as possible someone (who they knew to be a Turtle) “Are you a Turtle?” If the response wasn’t “You bet your ass I am” then a drink was owed. Mom caught him explaining the joke to me.
Anyway my church like some others in my town (probably all across the eastern half of the country) rescheduled the traditional time of Christmas Eve services so everyone could get home and settled in for that broadcast from lunar orbit. I set up my telescope outside and recall being torn during the broadcast wanting both to take it in on TV but also run outside and look through my telescope to maybe catch a glimpse of the spacecraft. Since my brain overruled my heart I knew it wasn’t powerful enough so I watched Cronkite and the whole thing like you eid.
I’ve written some lengthy stuff on that time and that specific mission including a piece with a lot of links and videos for the 50th anniversary back in 2018. That broadcast and sitting alone in our living room during Apollo 11’s landing are still vivid in my mind. As was that first moonwalk but knowing all that was involved in making a safe touchdown and knowing what we SHOULD have been hearing in the radio calls vs. what was actually being said, knowing things had gotten dicey had me with my heart in my throat.
Some historical events have to be lived through to fully appreciate them both in the moment and in historical context. One can explain, just as our elders tried to explain the Depression and WWII to us but somewhere in my life I finally “got” that hard as they tried some things can never be fully explained, at least the emotions felt.