We're losing our heroes...

I met Buzz Aldrin at LAX once waiting for our luggage. Didn't get a chance for an autograph so a handshake had to do.

And then in 2015, I attended a conference where Gene Cernan was one of the keynote speakers (I was also one, but on a different day and we didn't get to actually meet face-to-face).

That being said, I was at another conference where again I was one of the keynote speakers along with Homer Hickam, the author of the book 'Rocket Boys', which was later made into the movie 'October Sky'. Hickem, while he was never an astronaut, worked worked for NASA, training Shuttle crews for several missions including the one that repaired the Hubble Telescope, and when he retired from NASA in 1998, he was the payload training manager for the International Space Station. He was speaking at an engineering conference and I had the opportunity to sit next to him at the speaker's banquet the evening before. After the dinner, they previewed the movie 'October Sky' which was open to all the attendees and their families.

And going way back, while in college, Dr. Wernher von Braun came and gave a lecture. And while I didn't get to talk with him much, we did get to shake hands at a meet-n-greet they held afterwards (what struck me was that he was a lot shorter than what he looked in the movies).

OCU