Posts: 1522
From: Greensboro, NC USA
Registered: Feb 2006

Posts: 2896
From: Titusville, FL USA
Registered: Feb 2005

posted 11-18-2008 06:47 PM               

---

...and to think Guenter gave him a cane in 1971 because he was the oldest astronaut (at that time) to fly.

Best wishes to the Icy Commander's family.

Posts: 165
From: North Carolina, USA
Registered: Jul 2005

posted 11-18-2008 07:15 PM               

---

Oh gosh, I'm gonna cry. How could I forget it was today?!!

I sat on his lap for an entire afternoon (I was four years old), and drew him a crayon drawing while he told me all about what it was like to go up into space! I don't know what was more enchanting to me — those blue eyes and giant teeth just inches from my face, or the fact that he was just SO believable, SO convincing in making me believe that I could really do anything I wanted to.

Well, here's to you, Mr. Shepard — HAPPY BIRTHDAY! You helped make a little girl dream really big in life. And I wish you were still here, so that you could have gotten a (hopefully) new-and-improved crayon drawing in the mail as a birthday present.

Posts: 1156
From: Sandpoint, ID, USA
Registered: Mar 2003

Posts: 1522
From: Greensboro, NC USA
Registered: Feb 2006

Posts: 1156
From: Sandpoint, ID, USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 11-19-2008 09:14 PM               

---

A great photo. In fact, it's the one I got Guenter to sign.

Proof, I think, that people from a different era had a little bit thicker skin than some today...

Posts: 2272
From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007

posted 11-21-2008 06:03 AM               

---

Yes, people did have thicker skin back then but Guenter still got some flak over it from NASA higher ups. He talks about it in his book how he got some phone calls after that and basically told them that he had no idea Al was going to do that (Want to talk to the guy who did it? Well he is halfway to the moon right now).

So Al apparently didn't necessarily do it entirely for the funny bit on the pad (although that was part of it), but rather so Guenter could squirm later on as he dealt with the fallout from it.

That was part of Al's charm though.

Posts: 85
From: Queens, NY, USA
Registered: Nov 2008

Posts: 165
From: North Carolina, USA
Registered: Jul 2005

posted 11-18-2015 01:01 PM               

---

Remembering, again, this great man on his birthday....

Whenever I think of other heroes in my life who have passed on, to me they seem like starlight. But Alan Shepard? He's more a glaring grinning blazing beam of sunlight, still illuminating a path for me in my life that says "... Anne, you can DO it!!"

Happy Birthday, Mr. Shepard--you are deeply missed. Definitely lighting a candle for you today.

Posts: 1211
From: Brandon, Fl
Registered: May 2012

Posts: 396
From: Dumfries, VA, USA
Registered: Aug 2014

posted 11-19-2015 10:51 AM               

---

Admiral Shepard certainly made his mark on history.

It's a shame he missed beating Gagarin and the Soviets by only a few weeks back in 1961.

Would have been fun to say he was the first one in space -- nevertheless it doesn't diminish his accomplishments in the slightest. His was a life fully lived!

Posts: 42988
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 11-19-2015 10:55 AM               

---

If Shepard had been the first human in space, there's a possibility he would have never gotten to walk on the moon, as the space race may have ended long before either the Soviet Union or United States reached the lunar surface.

It is, of course, all a "what if," but it was because NASA was still trailing the Russians in 1961 that led Kennedy to seek a goal (the moon) that would put the United States ahead...