The passing of a legend

Jim Lovell RIP

Aug 10, 2025

Take a long slow breath and relax…Take another. Relax.

Pale red light filled the western sky and the surface of the pond where our summer place is. The shadows of the half-domes of trees on either side of the pond paint the places that border the light black. Lies than a third on each side. In the dusk, two Muscovy ducks are slowly swimming toward the horizon, into the light. They stop occasionally. One repeatedly dips his head under the water and shakes it as he recovers. The other waits patiently so they can continue their swim.

I remembered why we leased tiny, rustic plot. It’s costs peanuts by most people’s standards, a king’s ransom measured against my books. But it’s mine, for now.

I hope everyone reading this has a place, it needn’t be a second residence, to stare at something sweet and perhaps pointless in the grander scheme of things. That moment is yours. You own it. Remember the image, the feeling. Don’t even take a picture. Just tuck it away in your mind. It will come visit occasionally.

A most respected “failure”.

This one is a real bummer. As a kid, I was a Mercury, Gemini and Apollo super freak. I read everything I could find on the space program and moon shot. I only vaguely remember the last of the Mercury launches. I remember my parents talking about John Glenn’s orbital flight.1 Most kids knew everything there was to know about sports and their heroes were famous athletes. Makes sense.

My heroes were astronauts. If they were on TV, I was glued to the set. Every launch, space walk, rendezvous. Then the Apollo fire happened. I couldn’t believe it. To a kid of nine, NASA was perfect. the death of astronauts seemed impossible.

Later, I watched every moon orbit and moon walk. With Apollo 13, the whole world stopped. There was no other event. No other news was of the least importance. And in the end, I had one true hero, Jim Lovell.

He, and his crew, and the guys on the ground, under unimaginable pressure, with the world and the President of the United States watching, often made up entirely new concepts on the fly. It was one of those truly rare examples of brains, teamwork and raw grit you’d be lucky to witness a few times in your lifetime.

An inspiring era is disappearing before our eyes. All the Mercury guys are gone. There are only two of the Gemini crewmen left, Aldrin and Scott. They and four others are the last of the Apollo program, Russell Schweickart (Apollo 9), Fred Haise (Apollo 13), Charles Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17).

But Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were the last of the early NASA astronauts most people can still name. Now there is only one. I can’t remember ANY of the shuttle astronauts without looking them up.

It feels like watching our WWII vets passing. One wants to make it stop, preserve these guys and what they represent. We want THEM to be the ones to tell their stories. Life and big events are funny that way.

Silly side note.

Some don’t know this, but Lovell was in the movie Apollo 13. As the astronauts make their way across the deck of the “Iwo Jima”, they are greeted by grey haired Admiral in his whites. You only glimpse his profile. That’s Jim.