Close and Far at the Same Time: Remembering Alan Shepard
Alan and Louise Shepard
On April 9, 1965, NASA introduced the Mercury 7 astronauts to the world—America's first group of space travelers. One of those seven was Alan Shepard, a name etched into history as the first American to travel into space. But for me, that name also echoes across my family's stories, childhood memories, and moments of near-crossing paths that life never quite completed.
Alan Shepard was born and raised in the farming part of Derry, New Hampshire—what used to be called Londonderry. My father, born on April 9 years before the Mercury 7 were announced, grew up there, too. He attended the same school and remembered Alan well. Back then, Londonderry was the kind of community where everyone knew everyone else. Alan was even the local paperboy for a time, making the rounds in a neighborhood where my father's family lived. In fact, Alan and my aunt, Minerva, were classmates. As boys will do, he liked to tease her about her name—Minerva-Manure, he called her, but it wasn’t mean-spirited. They were friends in that scrappy way of schoolkids. My dad was a couple of years older, but he had his own interactions with Alan and recalled him with fondness and a bit of hometown pride when Alan soared into national fame.
Alan Shepard would go on to become the first American in space on May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7, and later commanded Apollo 14, becoming the fifth person to walk on the Moon. He even famously hit a golf ball on the lunar surface—a moment equal parts technical marvel and human whimsy. He was the epitome of what Tom Wolfe captured in The Right Stuff, both the book and the movie that immortalized the early days of America’s space program.
What I didn’t realize until years later was how close my own life came to intersecting with his again. After his NASA years, Alan retired to Pebble Beach, California—just down the road from where I was working in Monterey for a few months. I had no idea he was there. It wasn’t until his death in 1998 that I learned of his proximity. At that very time, I was on a temporary assignment at NASA, and I remember when a tree was planted in his honor. His wife, Louise, came to attend the tree-planting ceremony. Heartbreakingly, she passed away on the plane ride home, after stopping to visit their daughter in Colorado.
At that time, I happened to be living with an astronaut’s wife who had known Louise well “in the old days.” She shared stories of those tight-knit astronaut spouses—ones that rarely make the headlines but form the emotional backbone of space history. Hearing those stories felt like an echo of the stories my father used to tell about Alan as a young boy in Derry. It brought a deep, almost nostalgic ache. I wished I had known they were in Pebble Beach during the months I lived nearby. I wish I could have met them—not just for who they were in the public eye, but for who they were as people, deeply rooted in a small New England town that shaped both their lives and mine.
Life is funny like that—sometimes close and far at the same time.
Check out recent issues.
 |
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, Pinterest, Bluesky, and Instagram.
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our author au pair services will mentor you through the process.
Julia Aziz, signing her book, Lessons of Labor, at an event at Book People in Austin, Texas.
Comments
Post a Comment