The Man With The Right Stuff
Astronaut Alan Shepard has died. And another piece of America is gone. Shepard was the first American in space. He was one of those brave few, the very few, that band of brothers who brought us from behind to win the race to the moon.
They had the right stuff, those original seven astronauts. They had it in their guts and in their hearts. So did the many thousands of American working men and women who build the right stuff Shepard and the others flew to glory, and eventually to the moon.
But it was Shepard, Glenn, Grissom, Slayton, Schirra, Mitchell, Roosa-- the original Mercury Seven who were up front, out front and out there, on the razor's edge of the new frontier, the high frontier with our flag on their sleeves, and our hopes and dreams, our future and our pride riding fireballs into the eerie, silent depths of space.
Most Americans alive today were not living when Shepard made that first hearts-in-our-throats, pray he makes it, ride.
It was May 5, 1961. The Russians were so far ahead in the space race that America could not even see their tail lights. The Russians had stunned the world by launching Sputnik, the world's first space object, years before in the mid-50s.
They followed by sending men into space, while we, the Americans, were still trying to send up monkeys.
It was humiliating and frightening. The world was at the height of the Cold War. Russia was bidding to become the world's dominant power. Academics and the intelligentsia may remember it as a time of paranoia, misplaced fears, Communism and jingoism. America's feelings as the Russians led.
But rank and file Americans knew better. And still do. It mattered. And mattered a lot who led the exploration of space.
It still does.
Alan Shepard was among those who led us back, all the way back, to eventually take the lead, never to relinquish it, climaxing with the American moon landing in 1969.
Alan Shepard, dead at the age of 74. And another piece of America is gone.
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