{"id":172505,"date":"2025-08-08T20:33:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=172505"},"modified":"2025-08-08T20:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:33:30","slug":"jim-lovell-dies-age-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=172505","title":{"rendered":"Jim Lovell dies, age 97"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_172506\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-172506\" style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-172506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/James_Lovell-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/James_Lovell-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/James_Lovell-266x333.jpg 266w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/James_Lovell.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-172506\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Captain James Lovell, USN (ret)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Another of my childhood heroes has passed on to his eternal reward. Even if you didn&#8217;t follow the Space Race, you&#8217;ve probably heard of Jim Lovell. He was the commander of Apollo 13, and was played by Tom Hanks in the movie about their near death experience on the way to the moon.<\/p>\n<p>Before Apollo 13, his final space mission, he flew on Gemini 7 (with Frank Borman), commanded Gemini 12 (with Buzz Aldrin), and Apollo 8 (with Borman and Bill Anders). Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to leave earth orbit and go around the moon. They most famously read from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Day 1968. Lovell was slated to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 13, but they missed that objective of the mission. As such, Lovell is the only man to have gone to the moon twice without walking on it (John Young and Gene Cernan both went twice but walked on their second trip).<\/p>\n<p>Prior to his time with NASA, Lovell was a naval aviator and test pilot. Among his many awards and decorations are the Navy Distinguished Service Medal (twice), Distinguished Flying Cross (twice), Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Space Medal of Honor, France&#8217;s Legion of Honor, and Distinguished Eagle Scout. He shared the prestigious aviation awards of the Harmon Trophy (with the other men of Gemini 7 and 6) and the Collier Trophy (Apollo 8). Time Magazine selected the men of Apollo 8 as their Men of the Year in 1968.<\/p>\n<p>Lovell, by all accounts a very humble man, had a cameo in the film\u00a0<em>Apollo 13<\/em>. He plays the captain of USS Iwo Jima welcoming the crew back to earth after they land. The filmmakers had offered to make him an admiral, but he said, &#8220;I retired as a captain and a captain I will be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Godspeed, Captain Lovell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another of my childhood heroes has passed on to his eternal reward. Even if you didn&#8217;t &hellip; <a title=\"Jim Lovell dies, age 97\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=172505\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jim Lovell dies, age 97<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":172506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490,119,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nasa","category-navy","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/172506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}