The Washington Post – T. Rees Shapiro
“The space cowboy with the silver hair had a glimmer in his eye. He was standing in the present, earthbound inside a suburban elementary school gymnasium packed with 600 children. But in his mind, Eugene Cernan was floating back four decades and 250,000 miles away, to the silty crust of the moon during his time as a NASA astronaut on the 17th and final Apollo mission. “We were then as far as we could go into the sky, into the heavens,” Cernan told the students. “The sky is full of stars. But it’s dark. It’s blackness and the Earth … ” His voice drifted as he ended mid-thought. “I think back and was it really a dream? Or did it really happen?” For three days in December 1972, Cernan charted escarpments and craters in the lunar surface. With each buoyant step surrounded by the darkness of space, he enjoyed the light of discovery.”(more)