Meeting Captain Alan Bean
August 2005 :
On June 8, the Skyscrapers had the pleasure of meeting and hearing from Captain Alan Bean, the Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 12, fourth man to walk on the moon, and Commander of Skylab Mission II. Captain Bean was the guest speaker at the annual Celebrity/Scholarship Dinner hosted by the Center for Business Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In the entire history of humanity, out of the billions and billions of people who have ever existed, only twelve people have walked on the Moon. It was an awe-inspiring experience that night to meet one of those twelve.
There was a VIP reception with Alan before the dinner, which many of us attended. It was a nice opportunity to meet Alan in an intimate setting, speak with him for a few moments and have him sign various memorabilia. People brought copies of Alan’s book, Apollo, Apollo-era photos, maps of the Moon and Dan Lorraine even brought a set prop from “That’s All There Is,” the Apollo 12 episode of the From the Earth to the Moon series.
When I had a chance to speak with Alan during the reception, I told him that my stepfather worked at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, and was the engineer who figured out the angle that the Saturn V rocket had to tip prior to lift-off to avoid colliding with the launch tower. He smiled and responded, “It worked!”
When we weren’t speaking with Alan, many of us sat at tables, chatted and enjoyed being in the presence of greatness and historical significance. At the end of the reception, there was a raffle and our own Jim Hendrickson won a beautiful Alan Bean print (“America’s Team . . . Just the Beginning,” a mural at Space Center Houston) that had been signed and framed.
After the reception, we moved on to the dinner. In a nice show of community support, several businesses had donated tables for the dinner so that local children could come hear Alan speak. Out of the 550 people in attendance at the dinner, 240 were children. Before the dinner, Alan went to each of the kids’ tables so that they could have their pictures taken with him. They were thrilled and it would be interesting to know if the dinner and listening to Alan is going to be the spark that propels one of those children to be an astronaut some day. Who knows? Maybe the first man or woman to walk on Mars was sitting with us that night.
After dinner and the rest of the evening’s ceremonies, including another raffle in which Steve Hubbard won a signed and framed photo of Alan Bean on the moon, Alan spoke to the crowd about the Apollo 12 mission and the space program. It was a very inspirational, personal talk. He was at times funny, at times motivational, at times educational – always uplifting. Here are some memorable moments from his speech: • As Alan was talking about how each of us has unlimited potential, he looked out and said, “There are a lot of kids here tonight who have taken and will take many tests in their lives. But you need to know that there is not a test in this world that can tell you what you will accomplish in the future. That is up to you.” • As Alan was talking about space flight and the then-current grounding of the Space Shuttle due to the Columbia accident and subsequent NASA review, he said, “There will never be safe space flight. There will be more accidents and more deaths. But we can’t let that stop us anymore than the fact that we know people will have car accidents today can stop us from getting in our cars and driving. We must explore.” • Alan shared a fun insider story from the Apollo 12 mission. He and Pete Conrad discussed bringing an arrowhead to the moon and tossing it onto the ground during their EVA. As they walked back and forth with their video camera, they could casually sweep across the area with the arrowhead and wait for Mission Control to call out in their headsets a few seconds later, “Wait! Wait! Go back!” They decided not to do it because they figured they would get “strung up.”
• Alan talked about how the writers of the Bible pictured the Garden of Eden as lying in the Tigris/Euphrates river valley. But when he was at the black and white, sterile Moon and looked back at the colorful, dynamic Earth, the whole Earth looked like the Garden of Eden to him. He said, “We all live in the Garden of Eden and don’t even realize it.”
• In talking about our uniqueness as individuals, Alan said that we are each a unique combination of thoughts, feelings and experiences and that the “song” in each of us is unique, that “if we don’t sing the song in our soul, that it will never be sung in the entire universe ever.”
• When Alan splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, he looked out the window at the bobbing blue ocean and the passing clouds and thought they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He said he was seeing them with alien eyes after being away for only 10 days. Now, he never complains about the weather, or traffic or standing in line because he is so blessed to be sharing this beautiful Earth with all of us.
After his talk, Alan stayed as late as his flight would allow and signed autographs for the kids. It was great to hear 8-year olds running away with their eyes on fire as they excitedly told their friends and parents that they “got his autograph!” Actually, I guess we all felt the same way that evening. As Alan was leaving for the night, we grabbed him for a final group picture: Overall, it was an amazing night. It was certainly one of the top ten experiences of my life and something I will never forget. We all owe Dan Lorraine a huge thank you for helping the CBR market the event and helping us all to be part of it.
