Alan Shepard
1924 - 1998
Alan Shepard roared into space in 1961 with no guarantee
that he would come back alive. But he did, after 15 minutes
that launched the United States on an adventure that keeps
growing.
Shepard, an original Mercury astronaut, was 37 years old
when he climbed into his capsule at Cape Canaveral Air
Station on May 5, 1961, and waited to be shot into the
unknown. In the nearly forty years since, hundreds of
astronauts have followed him off the planet in that
pursuit, but only Shepard can claim America's first
flight into space.
"When you use the term `astronaut,' you're talking about
Alan Shepard," said Jay Barbree of Merritt Island, who
helped write the book Moon Shot, in which Shepard and
astronaut Deke Slayton chronicled NASA's early Apollo
years. "There's a lot of guys out there any more with
that title, but none of them are quite like he was.
They're just not out there doing what Alan did."
"He was the embodiment of the `right stuff' - a tough,
straight-talking, risk-taker," said John Logsdon,
director of the Space Policy Institute at George
Washington University in Washington, D.C. "He had all
the characteristics that we associate with the image
of the astronaut hero."
His 15-minute taste of space wasn't enough for Shepard.
He wanted on a ride to the moon, but suffered a setback
when he was diagnosed with an ear problem that caused
nausea and dizziness. The condition kept him grounded
for six years, and Shepard served as NASA's astronaut
chief while the first men were chosen and trained for
voyages to the moon. After a successful operation cured
his ear ailment, Shepard was renamed to active flight
status and eventually landed the command of Apollo 14,
America's third lunar landing mission.
Calling it the most personally satisfying event of his
career, Shepard stood on the moon and cried as he looked
back at the Earth. Before leaving, he would knock a few
golfballs on the dusty terrain.
He left NASA in 1974, pursuing business ventures in
real estate, quarter horses and other enterprises that made
him a millionaire. But Shepard always supported the space
program, and served as president of the Mercury Seven
Foundation, an astronaut-based group that raises money
for science and engineering scholarships. He also supported
the shuttle program and NASA's long-embattled efforts to
build an international space station in Earth orbit.
In a guest column in FLORIDA TODAY in 1992, Shepard said
that attempts to kill funding for the station project were
shortsighted. He saw the station as a stepping stone to
future exploration of the heavens. "The space station
represents our future," Shepard wrote. "Let's hope we
still have what it takes to step up to that challenge. The
dreams of our children are riding on it."
Born in rural New Hamshire, Shepard was the son of a
banker. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944
and served aboard the destroyer Cogswell during World War
II. After the war, he earned his pilot wings and a spot in
the Navy Test Pilot School in Maryland. He was among the
first seven astronauts chosen in May 1959.
Shepard's passing represents the change that has taken
hold of NASA's space program, which now sends physicists
and doctors into space as readily as test pilots. Shepard
was part of the Old Guard, who escorted NASA into the
space that the agency hopes to inhabit permanently starting
with the construction later this year of the International
Space Station.
"He and his Mercury colleagues were real heroes," Logsdon
said. "They were pathbreakers. His death reminds us that
we're in the transition away from the heroic age of
spaceflight. "The people who live on space station are
going to be professionals doing their work, not heroes.
He was first in line of the originals that started the
space age, but that time has passed."
"NASA has lost one of its greatest pioneers, America
has lost its shining star," said NASA administrator Dan
Goldin. "Alan Shepard lived to explore the heavens. On
this, his final journey, we wish him Godspeed."
President Clinton said that the astronaut was "one of the
great heroes of modern America. None of us who were alive
then will ever forget him sitting so calmly in Freedom
Seven atop a slender and sometimes unreliable Mercury
Redstone rocket," Clinton said.
Shepard left behind his wife, two daughters, six
grandchildren and a legacy of bravery and vision as
one of America's space pioneers.
