Astronaut Wally Schirra dies…

From an AP article…

“Walter M. Schirra Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and the only man to fly on NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, died Thursday. He was 84. Schirra’s death leaves Glenn and Carpenter as the only Mercury Seven astronauts still living.

An aviation buff since childhood, known to fellow astronauts for his colorful personality and independent streak, Schirra became the third American to orbit the Earth in October 1962. He encircled the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours. He returned to space three years later as commander of Gemini 6 and guided his two-man capsule toward Gemini 7, already in orbit. On Dec. 15, 1965, the two ships came within a few feet of each other as they shot through space, some 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth. It was the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit.
His third and final spaceflight in 1968 inaugurated the Apollo program that sought to land a man on the moon.

A native of Hackensack, N.J., Schirra developed an early interest in flight. His father was a fighter pilot during World War I and later barnstormed at county fairs with Schirra’s mother, who sometimes stood of the wing of a biplane during flights.

Wally, as he liked to be called, took his first flight with his father at age 13 and already knew how to fly when he left home for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

After graduation in 1945, Schirra served in the Seventh Fleet and flew 90 combat missions during the Korean War. He was credited with shooting down one Soviet MiG-15 and possibly a second. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals.

Schirra was renowned for his pranks, such as reporting a Santa Claus UFO sighting during his Gemini flight. NASA itself cited a classic tale from astronaut training: When one nurse insisted that Schirra provide a urine sample, he reportedly filled a 5-gallon jug with warm water, detergent and iodine and left it on her desk.”

For those of us old enough to recall when spaceflight was new and not taken for granted, it’s hard to imagine the space pioneers being in their 80s.
And think about the leap of technology…the son of a WWI pilot goes into space…in three different models of spacecraft.
RIP Capt. Schirra.