Page 30 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2019

PEOPLE and beyond
nly a handful of men have traversed to another celestial body – the moon – and my father was one of them. Having flown on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, my dad, Stuart “Stu” Roosa, was the Command Module Pilot who circled the moon solo, while planted the U.S. flag in a mountainous region called Fra Mauro. It was an
important mission, for Apollo 13 was a near-fatal flight, having barely gotten the crew back to earth safely. Apollo 14 had their own issues, but were able to get the moon program back on track and prove to the world that landing men on the moon was not a fluke or by luck.
30 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • July 2019
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Apollo 14 was the third lunar landing, with the first landing being accomplished this month 50 years ago. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 communicated back to Earth the famous words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
As we remember the historic
moon landings from 1969 to 1972, I fondly recall the unique career my father had in flying. He was born
in Durango, Colorado and raised
in Claremore, Oklahoma. He knew from a young age that he wanted to fly airplanes, but before he learned a stick and rudder, he first took a job with the United States Forest Service and became a smokejumper. He
bailed out of airplanes to help put out forest fires in the vast woods of Oregon’s national parks.
After joining the Air Force, he quickly moved up the ranks to become a fighter pilot at Langley Air Force Base, and was then selected
to become a test pilot at the famed Edwards Air Force Base under the command of Chuck Yeager (who broke the sound barrier). My father went on to marry my mother, Joan Barrett, a Mississippian who went
to grade school with Elvis Presley in Tupelo in the 1940s. I am their only daughter and was born in 1963.
In 1966, NASA looked to mostly military pilots to become astronauts of the Apollo moon missions. My dad was selected and moved our
Stuart “Stu” Roosa suiting up on ight day.
Stuart “Stu” Roosa
Rosemary Roosa with the Apollo 14 Space Capsule.