{"id":18933,"date":"2017-01-17T15:38:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T20:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=18933"},"modified":"2024-01-16T13:01:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T18:01:05","slug":"astronaut-gene-cernan-last-man-on-the-moon-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/astronaut-gene-cernan-last-man-on-the-moon-dies.html","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Gene Cernan, Last Man on the Moon, Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

America lost one of its aviation heroes yesterday when Eugene Andrew \u201cGene\u201d Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, died in a hospital in Houston, Texas, at the age of 82. Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 mission, walked on the moon on 14 December 1972, one of only a dozen men who have walked on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: astronaut Eugene Andrew \u201cGene\u201d Cernan, December 1971. Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cernan died just a few weeks after America lost another of its aviation heroes, astronaut John Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn died on 8 December 2016.<\/p>\n

Cernan is remembered for something poignant he did just before climbing up the ladder of the lunar module to leave the moon\u2019s surface: he traced his daughter\u2019s initials in the dusty soil. Reaching down with his finger, he drew the letters \u201cTDC\u201d \u2013 for his then nine-year-old daughter, Teresa Dawn Cernan.<\/p>\n

Cernan\u2019s obituary, shown below, reprinted his reflections on that very personal moment. He said that someday, far in the future, someone else would be on the moon\u2019s surface and find:<\/p>\n

\u2026our footprints and those initials and say, \u201cI wonder who was here? Some ancient civilization was here back in the 20th<\/sup> century, and look at the funny marks they made.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His obituary also reprinted remarks Cernan had made in 2007, reflecting back on the moment when he and fellow astronaut Harrison \u201cJack\u201d Schmitt had set the lunar lander Challenger<\/em> down on the moon\u2019s surface. After switching off the lander\u2019s engines, they were overwhelmed by the silence:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where you experience the most quiet moment a human being can experience in his lifetime. There\u2019s no vibration. There\u2019s no noise. The ground quit talking. Your partner is mesmerized. He can\u2019t say anything. The dust is gone. It\u2019s a realization, a reality, all of a sudden you have just landed in another world on another body out there (somewhere in the) universe, and what you are seeing is being seen by human beings \u2013 human eyes \u2013 for the first time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is Cernan\u2019s obituary, published today by the Chicago Tribune<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois), 17 January 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Note:<\/em><\/strong> There are millions of recent obituaries in GenealogyBank\u2019s Recent Newspaper Obituaries<\/a> collection, from 1977 to Today. Come take a look today to see what you can find about a member of your own family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article featuring the obituary of astronaut Eugene Andrew \u201cGene\u201d Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, who died 16 January 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12235],"tags":[10202,12661,1084],"class_list":["post-18933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-astronauts","tag-eugene-andrew-gene-cernan","tag-obituaries"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/photo-0117-2017-featured-graphic-gene-cernan-moon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97097,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18933\/revisions\/97097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}