He Shared the Common Dream

Wally Schirra has died. He was one of the original 7 astronauts and the only one that flew Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. I have an uncle, John Miller, that worked for NASA developing the guidance system for Apollo, so the space program was a huge part of my childhood. My grandfather's office was covered with pictures from the moon and other NASA memorabilia that uncle John sent him. It seems lost now, but NASA was a huge bright spot during that time when when chaos, assignations, and war darkened our world. As Schirra himself said "We shared a common dream to test the limits of man's imagination and daring", and by watching Schirra and the others at NASA fulfill their dreams, we knew that the darkness of the Kennedy assignations, Vietnam war, and Watergate would not extinguish our own.