A 50th Anniversary

Alan Shepard

Yesterday was the fifth of May, 2011.  It was Cinco de Mayo.  Recently in this country there has been an effort to turn the commemoration of the Battle of Pueblo into some kind of Mexican St. Patrick’s Day.  This movement has been led by the restaurant and alcoholic beverage industry.  It has always been kind of humorous to me because so many believe that the 5h of May is Mexican Independence Day.  it is not.  Mexican Independence Day is September 16, 1810.  The Battle of Puebla was on May 5, 1862 was when the Mexican defeated the French who had been occupying their country for a number of years.  I was actually kind of happy to have noticed much hype about Cinco de Mayo festivities yesterday. 

Early in the morning I happened to read the This Day in History email from History.com.  Their lead story for the day was Cinco de Mayo but another historical event.  It was the 50th Anniversary of Alan Shephard’s flight into space.  On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard was the first American to fly into space.  He was launched into space in the one man Mercury capsule named Freedom 7 which sat atop a Redstone missle.  His slight into space was only five minutes long.  

Shepard was indeed the first American in space.  It was a big deal and it was a big deal for me.  I was all of nine years old and just finishing the 4th grade at Robert Burns Elementary School in Detroit, MI.   It was a big day at our school.  Miss MacDonald had a television brought into our homeroom and we watched it all on that eventful Friday morning.   I was fascinated by the prospect of the launch and the flight.  I was very interested in the Space Program..  I was pretty sure after the first few Mercury flights that I wanted to be an astronaut.

Freedom 7 Launch

I remember how long and tedious the lead-up to the launch was.  I had no clue as to the complexities involved and that all the components and conditions had to be just so.  The countdown was suspended a few times with the last being T-15 minutes.   It seemed like forever but finally the countdown from ten, like in all the movies, began.  At 9:35 am, the missile roared to life and propelled Alan Shepard and my spirits up and away.  The whole flight lasted only 15 minutes and 28 seconds from launch to splashdown.   He did not even orbit the earth.  He went up 116 statute miles and hit a velocity of over 5,000 mph.  It was exciting and it was quick.
Alan Shepard ((November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was the first American in space but he was the second man in space.  The first , of course, was the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (March 9, 1934 - March 27, 1968).  Gagarin went up on April 12, 1961 beating the Americans by 23 days.  His orbital flight was over one hour long.  Gagarin never got the credit and recognition he deserved in our country because of the Cold War.  Gagarin died tragically in a routine training flight in a MiG.

Yuri Gagarin

I even think Alan Shepard was overshadowed by John Glenn who in the third Mercury mission orbited the earth three times.   Shepard did not go up again until 1971 in Apollo 14 and got to walk on the moon.  I was saddened when he died.  I was 45 years old then and was surprised that he died because he was always young in my mind.  

There was not enough hoopla over this anniversary yesterday.  This was something worth commemorating.