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“The stars are not the limit; they are just the beginning.”
— Buzz Aldrin
During the late spring of 1961, summer vacation loomed large in Mount Pleasant. In a few short days, schoolkids all over town would swap classrooms and books for bicycles and the swimming pool at Dellwood Park.
Seventh grade in the piney woods of East Texas that year felt less like the happy-go-lucky sixth-grade playground I left behind the year before and more like the classroom confinement of high school, soon to come.
Campuses for both schools were separated only by a faculty parking lot, where David Neeley and I played tetherball many afternoons after school while waiting for Mr. Ricks to complete his first bus route before coming back for a southside in-town run.
Just four years earlier, the Russian satellite Sputnik 1 entered orbit, launching dreams and fascination for millions of schoolkids about space and the beginning of the “Space Race.”
Meanwhile, comic books such as “Sky Masters of the Space Force” focused on the seemingly realistic adventures of an American astronaut.
I’d read the comic books and the stack of Popular Science magazines sharing my closet with issues of Hot Rod and Car Craft. I heard about the space race but understood little about it. It seemed like something politicians promoted on the evening news.
News of the first American in space, Alan Shepard, filled the May 5 evening television segment. The revelation came a little more than three weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin marked a major space-race victory for the Soviets as the first human in outer space.
I still remember Dad turning on the cabinet- model Zenith TV, a relatively new addition to our house. Vacuum tubes hummed as the set warmed up, eventually rendering a flickering black-and-white image of Cape Canaveral in Florida.
News film replayed the day’s events, showing the “Freedom 7” capsule sitting atop the Mercury- Redstone rocket in the morning sunshine. Even as the countdown hit the final 10 seconds, I knew it had all taken place hours ago. But I was holding my breath anyway.
Clouds of white smoke erupted. TV speakers boomed with a deep rumble, sending shock waves shaking Mom’s leopard TV lamp planter she’d purchased with S&H Green Stamps.
Then Shepard’s cool, calm voice registered: “Roger, liftoff and the clock has started.” Saying it like he was just driving downtown to the Perry’s five-and-dime store or something.
For a little more than 15 minutes, I wasn’t sitting on the living room floor in East Texas. I was there in Freedom 7, headed for the heavens. I wondered how the G-forces felt. How the sky looked, turning from bright blue to deep purple, then into darkness. Seeing the Earth’s curve. I wondered how it felt to be the first American to see the planet as a shrinking sphere.
With the replay of the splashdown in the Atlantic, I felt excited. I felt happiness. I felt the dreamlike exuberance of realizing the Space Age was no longer just a comic-book fantasy; it was reality.
Going to bed that night, I looked at Jack, my cockatiel in his cage, and marveled at the thought that today humanity had soared higher than any bird ever could.
Somehow, school seemed less like confinement. Space travel had opened a whole new world to youngsters everywhere. For a nation, it placed the universe within arm’s reach, empowering even kids in small Texas towns to reach for the stars.
Last week, I was that kid again as I watched Artemis II return from a trip around the moon, bringing good news and astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen to nearly the exact splashdown site and at the planned time.
The Earth was ready for some good news, and Artemis II just might be the best news for young and old alike in a while, reminding us of what we are capable of when we work together as one.
Reaching for the stars.
