Well, it all started.....

How did I come to join CAP. Well, it all started when I was a kid. I had always enjoyed playing army or navy or air force or marine...you get the picture. Anyway, I had also wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. Now I was born in 1964 during the middle years of the space race. I remember watching the landing on the moon, the drama of Apollo 13, and I followed the Apollo 17 mission from beginning to end because I was helping my mother do a school project on it to help finish up her teaching degree. I watched all the space shots for the next few years in Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz. Then my dad passed away on July 10, 1975. Well, mom had to go to work to support us but she had trouble getting back into the work force and raising me alone. She got a temporary job teaching at Thompsonville Grade School for a teacher on maternity leave. While she was there, she found out that the advance team for a Christian evangelical ministry was going to speak at her school to encourage people to come to their main meeting at the West Frankfort High School gym. The name of the ministry was High Flight and the leader and main speaker for it was Col. James B. Irwin(ret.), the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 15.

Mom and me went to this advance meeting and I don't know how she did it but my mom talked to the two gentlemen there and introduced me to them. That's how I got to meet Dr. William B. Rittenhouse and Russ Roux. Dr. Bill had been a B-24 pilot in WWII who was shot down and captured on the famous Ploesti oil field raid in Rumania. He had written a book about his experiences as a POW called the "Barbed Wire Preacher". After the war, he became a minister and eventually ended up as the pastor of the Baptist church in Houston that many of the astronauts attended. He also had a Ph.D. in Mathematics and did consulting work for NASA. That's how he met Jim Irwin. Russ Roux was West Point graduate and Vietnam Vet who had come to the ministry after leaving the service. They talked to me and found out that I was very interested in the space program and promised me that if I came to the main meeting that after the service they would take me to meet Jim Irwin...

Part 2 tomorrow.