Alan Shepard

Dear Boo,

I watch you now at just over four years old and am amazed at how much you already comprehend technology.  Even though you’re too young to have your own computer, you certainly know how to navigate around mine.  You have to explain to me which remote does what with the television and you even use your own IPhone to play Angry Birds and Zombies  and all those other “free” downloads that your folks allow. 

Your world is one of the Internet and SKYPE and IPhones and Ipads.  Isn’t it grand that we can talk to each other from anywhere in the world and it sounds like we might as well be next door?  All of this is possible partly because of the hundreds of satellites whirling around the earth above your head.  The Space Station is there as well and people go up and come back.  Parts are delivered and repairs are made.  It’s all very commonplace and unspectacular unless something goes wrong.  But, it hasn’t always been that way. 

Let’s see – it’s been sixty-one years since I was four.  I know that sounds like a long time to you, but honestly, it’s not even a blink of eternity’s eye.  Until I was 10, the only things in outer space were those put there by God.    That all changed on October 4, 1957, when the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – more specifically its largest state, Russia) put the first satellite into space that we called “Sputnik.”  This triggered what became known as the “Race for Space” between the United States and the Soviet Union, the only two world powers at that time capable of such achievements. 

By 1961, the race escalated to see which country could first get a man in space.  In April, the Soviets seemed to gain the lead when they sent the first human, a man named Yuri Gagarin, into space for a complete orbit around the earth in 108 minutes.  

The United States wasn’t far behind.  By May of that year, America followed suit and launched Alan Shepard on a fifteen minute, 116 mile-high and 302 mile-long journey into space.  The liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida (now known as Cape Kennedy), was to be televised.  I was in the 7^th grade at Greenville Junior High School when this happened.  My mother and father decided to let me stay home from school so I could watch it live.

At the time, your great, great grandmother Mattie (whom I called Nonnie) lived with us in an apartment in the basement of our house.  She had a small black and white television (you can’t even imagine such a thing) and invited me to come downstairs to watch with her.  The apartment was truly minimalist in that there was only one room except for the bathroom.  Her piano was on one wall.  There were a couple of chairs comprising a sitting area.  Her double bed rested against the wall across from a small set of cabinets with a sink, stove and refrigerator which comprised her kitchen.  The TV sat on the kitchen cabinet, so we curled up on her bed as the countdown to liftoff started.

I honestly believe that the entire country held its collective prideful breath as the rocket engines fired and the smoke billowed out from under like an angry dragon fiercely blowing his nose.  Ever so slowly the rocket rose from the launch pad, freeing itself from the launch tower.  Nonnie and I sat mesmerized as the TV camera went to a telescopic lens and we could see the capsule holding Alan Shepherd break away from the main fuselage with a set of booster rockets.  

As we watched, Nonnie said something that I will always remember.  I don’t really think she was even talking specifically to me – just sort of saying it aloud to the universe.  “Just imagine – in my lifetime, I’ve seen the first flight of man and now the space flight of man.”

You see, Boo, she was alive in 1903 when Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  It only took two generations to go from that singular step to space travel.  And now, you’re two generations from me and the world has absorbed so many technological advances that it’s hard to comprehend or imagine what could be coming next. 

In no time, you will be marveling with your grandchildren – as I do with you – the world in which they live.  You will talk about how things “used to be,” and in doing so, you will help them understand something that is very significant -  Everything of today is founded upon the past and the past should be studied, revered and never disparaged for its lack of sophistication.