Recent Flashbacks about astronaut John Young and about the Crooms family’s legacy in Seminole County inspired letters from readers. Young, who walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 and commanded the first space-shuttle mission, grew up in Orlando, where he lived in the College Park neighborhood as a boy. He died in January at age 87.
Ramblin’ Wrecks
“John Young was my hero! Although he was 17 years ahead of me, I too grew up in College Park schools (Lake Silver, Lee, and Edgewater), where we would run from our classrooms to the ballfields in the 1950s and ’60s to watch the space launches.
“I wanted to follow in Young’s footsteps, so I applied to and was accepted at Georgia Tech — Young’s alma mater — to become an aerospace engineer. I walked into the Navy ROTC building to sign up to be a naval aviator and future astronaut, just like Young did.
“However, I never got further than the front desk, where the officer on duty asked me, ‘What are you wearing those glasses for, son?’ Unbeknownst to me or my parents, back then an astronaut or Navy aviator had to have 20-20 vision, uncorrected.
“So after graduation, I became a missile man at Lockheed Martin and spent most of my career managing technology sales of computers and networks. I never flew.
“I did meet John Young and spoke with him on several occasions at Georgia Tech alumni gatherings. And when I was a student, I even stopped his limo after a speech on campus and yelled out, ‘I’m from Orlando!’ He rolled the window down, smiled, waved and said hello.
“Maybe it was serendipity that my son, Todd, became a commercial airline pilot and flight instructor. He certainly got higher into the atmosphere than his dad did.”
“John Young — my hero, and a great life, well-lived.”
Rick Sickles, Orlando
Unappreciated?
“As a native of Seminole County, I don’t think that Orlando celebrates John Young enough. How many cities around the world can brag that a man who walked on the moon grew up in their city?”
Thomas Greenwood
Re-creating history
“I am a teacher at Crooms Academy of Information Technology and saw your Florida Flashback column of Feb. 11 on the history of Crooms.
“I was especially interested in the photo that was printed with the article, as it was sent around to the faculty just last week. [Note: The photo shows Principal Joseph Crooms on the steps of his Sanford home with the 1929 graduating class of Crooms Academy.]
“Crooms is going to recreate that photograph in a few weeks. Our current seniors are going to be bused to the site. They have been asked to dress in black and white, just as in the photo. The five living past principals will also be in the photo.”
Janet Fox
‘Forever Young’
To learn more about the life and career of John Young, check out his autobiography, “Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space,” written with James R. Hansen and published by the University Press of Florida in 2012.
The first chapter describes Young’s boyhood in Cartersville, Ga., and Orlando, where he remembers starting Princeton Elementary when he was only 5 years old because he could already read so well. His Grandfather Young in Cartersville had taught the boy to read, and the future astronaut pored over a set of books called “The Book of Knowledge” that his Uncle Will bought in installments. “From them I learned about everything I knew at the time,” he recalled in “Forever Young.”
One summer in the early 1940s, Young’s family visited Lookout Mountain, Tenn., and the boy gazed up at the moon through a telescope. “No one dreamed then that anyone would ever go there,” he wrote in “Forever Young.” It still amazes me that I was one of only 12 who did.”
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at jwdickinson@earthlink.net, FindingJoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter at the Sentinel, 633 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, FL 32801.
