Models and Heroes

I watched the shuttle launch by tiny, jerky web video yesterday, and it didn’t hit me then. I watched the replays on the news last night, on the big TV with the sound rumbling, and those beautifully clear close-ups of the booster rockets firing, and it still didn’t hit me.

It was this morning, reading the articles recounting the launch in USA Today. That was when it hit – a wave of emotion that brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. So there I sat at my desk, back turned to the cubicle door so no one would see my face, wondering what brought on such an overwhelming reaction. I’m certainly not alone, I noticed, as I read about the huge outpouring of emotion and joy for the launch of John Glenn.

But why such a reaction? There have been dozens of shuttle launches, and hundreds of astronauts who have taken that same ride into earth orbit. Why is it that the inclusion of a 77-year old guy from a time many of us barely remember makes this one different? Why am I sitting here with tears in my eyes?

Maybe it’s the realization that even though in my middle age I think I’m pretty old, here’s a person more than twice my age – and he’s up there orbiting the earth in zero-G. It certainly proves (in a smack-you-in-the-head sort of way) that even towards the end, life can be exciting and amazing. I can’t imagine anyone not being inspired by that, unless there’s someone in there 90’s somewhere saying “Sure, HE can do that – but he’s only 77 years old, for God’s sake”.

Maybe it’s the rush of memories that are brought back by all the images of Glenn the Gemini astronaut back in 1962. Granted, I wasn’t even born at the time, but soon afterwards. Like a lot of other American boys growing up in the sixties, I built models of the Mercury, Gemini, and Saturn rockets and hung them from my bedroom ceiling with fishing line. I had a poster-sized map of the lunar surface that my brother and I studied during each Apollo mission, analyzing why they put the LEM down in one particular place instead of in the Sea of Tranquility, or some other mystically named spot. I had the names of every Apollo astronaut memorized, and one of my most precious possessions was a collection of mission patches from every one of their flights.

Maybe it’s a feeling of loss when I look at our children today. Boxers with criminal records, “athletes” who are paid millions to chase a ball up and down a field, rock stars and rap stars who couldn’t give a damn about their country or society, these are the heroes of our children. (By the way, I’m not a real right-wing conservative, I just play one on TV.) The heroes of my generation were guys who weren’t in it for the money or the glory, they just had a job to do for their country and mankind. They climbed on top of those giant rockets, and with little more than courage and a computer guidance system that your average Oldsmobile would laugh at, blasted off to do something that had never been done before.

And even though no kid I know could tell you the names of the six other astronauts onboard Discovery, and I don’t think Toys ‘R’ Us even carries a space shuttle model, I felt a little better when I read the quote one of USA Today’s reporters got from a little boy watching the launch in Florida.

As his 46-year old mother wiped tears from her eyes, the seven-year old said, “It was the coolest thing I ever saw.” Makes me feel old and young, all at the same time.