Needham Broughton High School
Class Of 1968
Member Chatter
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DANIEL B. (Dan) GATEWOOD
 Posts: 142 View Profile |
The Planetarium Posted Saturday, July 21, 2018 06:42 AM From an N&O article this morning.... Before Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, they came to NC to study the starsBrief remarks in an email to friends concerning the article....I hope my cub scout friends find this :-)
In January of 1962 Mom took our Cub Scout den (Pack 303) to Chapel Hill to visit the Planetarium. We were held up for a while and a lady (Planetarium guide) came out to inform us that the the seven Mercury astronauts were in the theater prepping for an upcoming mission. A few minutes later we were allowed in--we just missed seeing John Glenn and the other six.
Friendship 7 was launched by an Atlas rocket on February 20, 1962 with John Glenn becoming the first American in orbit. The flight lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds, and circled the globe 3 times.
I still have a small brown plastic pad with the notes I took in blue ball point pen that morning while watching the space flight on TV in Mr. Wheeless's sixth-grade classroom at Frances Lacy School. When Glenn was reentering the earth's atmosphere we were afraid that he might burn up, that the capsule's heat shield might not hold up. But he made it through safely. "Boy, what a fireball!" he cried.
We were all a part of that history. And Mom was a great den mother, and our little den of scouts were so close to our real life heroes that day in Chapel Hill.
Jimmy Bradshaw, Chip Alexander, Mike Hughes, Eddie Bland, Paul Hickman, Randy Jackson, and Danny Gatewood were the cubbies. And Ethel Gatewood, my mom and den mother. :-)
 
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