ASTRONAUT WALLY SCHIRRA

Wally Scirra in 1962 suited up for a NASA Mercury Mission

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God Speed Walter M. Schirra Jr., who was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and the only man to fly on NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. He died yesterday at age 84 of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla. "Wally", as he preferred to be called, was an aviation buff since childhood and seemed to pass all necessary testing for the fledgling Mercury Program with a cheerful and mischevous demeanor that led him to be called a "colorful character". Wally was the third American to orbit the Earth in October 1962. He encircled the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than 9 hours. He returned to space three years later as commander of Gemini 6a guiding his two-man capsule with pilot Thomas Stafford toward Gemini 7, Commanded By Colonel Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. (My personal visit with Colonel Borman appeared here and is archived in this BLOG on "THE INTERVIEW" and was undertaken just days before 9/11 in New Mexico). On Dec. 15, 1965, the two ships came within a few feet of each other in what became the first-ever rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit. With Schirra's passing, only John Glenn and Scott Carpenter remain of the original Mercury 7 Astronauts immortalized in the motion picture "The Right Stuff". Most memorable for me in that film, was the performance of Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune" at Madison Square Gardens during a ballet salute to all seven astronauts. In the film, the men are seen gazing at each seated with their wives and nodding to one another--no words were needed. I remember getting quite choked up at this scene. These men achieved an amazing feat of setting the ground work of articulating President John F. Kennedy's dream of eventually landing a man on the Moon in 1969. Wally Schirra was a light-hearted practical joker. He reported a Santa Claus UFO sighting during his Gemini flight. NASA itself cited a classic tale from his astronaut training: When a nurse at NASA insisted that Schirra provide a urine sample, he reportedly filled a 5-gallon jug with warm water, detergent and iodine and left it on her desk! His Gemini 6a rendezvous mission with Colonel Borman and Jim Lovell was really a major milestone in the nation's space race with the Soviet Union, proving that two ships could dock in space. Schirra's Apollo 7 mission in October, 1968 with crew mates Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele restored the nation's confidence in the space program, which had been badly shaken a year earlier when three astronauts Ed White, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Roger Chaffee were killed in a flash fire on the launch pad. Colonel Frank Borman played a significant role as a member of the investigation team working to uncover the cause of that tragedy. In December of that year, Borman, along with Jim Lovell and Bud Anders became the first humans to circle the Moon. While in lunar orbit, the crew made a Christmas Eve Television Broadcast in which they read from the book of Genesis. It was the most watched broadcast to date. The Mercury 7 Astronauts included: Wally Schirrah, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and Deke Slayton. I'll just add that as one who has a romance with flight, whenever our nation loses a person of Wally Schirra's stature, it takes us back to a time when the world was less complicated, more united and when pride and patriotism burned bright. Anything was possible. These first men of space held captive our imaginations with Courage and Awe. God Speed Wally Schirra.

Wally Schirra, pictured at a science-fiction summit last year in Pasadena, California, was the only astronaut to have flown in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.

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Gemini 7 Photo taken from Gemini 6