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Space explorer Alan Shepard, the first American in space, died of leukemia at the age of 74. NewsHour essayist Roger Rosenblatt shares a passage of Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff, written about Shepard, in his memory.
JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight remembering astronaut Alan Shepard. Kwame Holman begins.KWAME HOLMAN: In 1959, Alan Shepard and six other men were chosen from a pool of 110 pilots who volunteered to go into space. NASA picked Shepard to guide its very first manned space flight. On May 5, 1961, Shepard became the first American in space. He flew for 15 minutes aboard the Mercury Freedom 7 Spacecraft and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. In an interview years later the former Navy test pilot explained his desire to be an astronaut.
ALAN SHEPARD: I think all those who volunteered and certainly all of those who ended up the finals like I did really sort of looked at it as an extension of what they're doing. See, as a test pilot you sort of keep flying bigger and better and faster and farther and higher, et cetera, et cetera.
In other words, you're expanding, as we call it, the boundary of the envelope, the envelope being the curve describing where thou shalt not pass if you're flying an airplane. And I think all of the original seven looked at it that way. It's not a brand new frontier really. It's just taking what we have and pushing it out. And I think all of us looked at it as a natural extension of what we'd been doing-flying strange-looking airplanes, and that sort of thing.
KWAME HOLMAN: Ten years after his Mercury flight Shepard walked on the Moon, the fifth astronaut to do so. As commander of that Apollo 14 mission, Shepard brought along a six-iron and became the first and so far only golfer on the Moon.
ALAN SHEPARD: And one more-for miles and miles-
KWAME HOLMAN: Thirty-seven years ago astronaut and Senator John Glenn was Alan Shepard's backup on the original Mercury flight.
SEN. JOHN GLENN, (D) Ohio: No one was more dedicated to this country and to the astronaut program, to flying, to the Navy, to being a dedicated patriot in this country, no one is going to exceed Al Shepard in that regard.
KWAME HOLMAN: President Clinton also remembered Alan Shepard today.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I can't help noting that there on the Moon he lived every golfer's dream-taking his six-iron and hitting the ball-in his words-for miles and miles. Alan Shepard truly had the right stuff. His service will always loom large in America's history.
KWAME HOLMAN: Alan Shepard died of leukemia last night at age 74.
JIM LEHRER: And to essayist Roger Rosenblatt. Roger, Alan Shepard, why is he an important man to all of us?
ROGER ROSENBLATT: Two things. The geopolitical importance and the human importance, Jim. The geopolitical importance we remember because he represented America rising from its humiliation by the Soviet Union when they had successes with Sputnik and again successes with Gagarin in space, the cosmonaut who flew in space. We tried to send up a satellite and it just fizzled on the launch pad, and the press was ruthless about it. Instead of calling it Sputnik, called it Kaputnik. And then Alan Shepard got in his rocket ship and took Americans back where they were supposed to be, where we believed we are supposed to be through invention and technology at the top of the heap.
And then there was the human aspect of it that a person did it, that it was a person. We talk about conquests of various things. Lindbergh flies the ocean or Columbus sails the ocean, or we conquer space, but it's not the abstractions we're interested in as much as I think a person doing it, someone with whom we can identify, someone superior, more courageous, more technically adroit, but in the end a person representing us who does something marvelous.
JIM LEHRER: And, Alan Shepard, as the President said today, he kind of exemplified Tom Wolfe's phrase, "The Right Stuff," did he not?
ROGER ROSENBLATT: He did. He was-I mean, he was-I mean, one imagined the grave sense of grace and humor playing golf on the Moon, but it wasn't just that. The "Right Stuff" had a moral element too. He looked back from it-when he was on the Moon, he looked back, and he saw our planet, and he was brought weeping, he said, because of its fragility. What he meant was that there were so many wars going on at the planet at the time and we were so careless with what we had, but from the perspective of the Moon he knew that he saw a treasure.
JIM LEHRER: Roger, you brought something that Tom Wolfe wrote in his book, "The Right Stuff," about Alan Shepard. Set it up and then read it for us.
ROGER ROSENBLATT: This is good. Here's Tom Wolfe as he's sort of imagining Shepard taking off and the thrill of getting a go. "Now he could feel his heart pounding. The most critical part of the flight, next to the launch itself, was only a moment away. The separation of the capsule from the rocket. You heard a muffled explosion from above, and the escape rocket blew off, and the capsule was now free of the rocket.
The force of the rocket pulling away accelerated his speed, and he felt as if he had had a kick from below. A three-inch long rectangular light lit up green on the instrument panel. On it were the letters 'Jet Tower,' 'Jettison Tower.' With the tower gone, the periscope would start operating and he could look out. But he had his eyes pinned on the green light. It was beautiful."
JIM LEHRER: "The Right Stuff." Roger Rosenblatt, thank you very much.
ROGER ROSENBLATT: Thank you.
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