“The Sense of Freedom That Flight Creates”

(p. B12) Frank Frederick Borman was born on March 14, 1928, in Gary, Ind.  . . .  When he was 5, Frank visited Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, and a lifelong passion for aviation was kindled.

“Dad took me for a five-dollar ride with a barnstorming pilot in an old biplane,” he recalled in “Countdown” (1988), a memoir written with Robert J. Serling. “I sat next to Dad in the front seat, with the pilot in the cockpit behind us, and I was captivated by the feel of the wind and the sense of freedom that flight creates so magically.”

. . .

What awed him most, he said, was his view of Earth from Apollo 8. As he put it, “The contrast between our memories of the Earth and the color on the Earth and the totally bleak and dead moon was striking.”

It was an image, he said, that he would “recall till the day I die.”

For the full obituary, see:

Richard Goldstein. “Frank Borman, 95, Astronaut Who Led First Orbit of the Moon, Dies.” The New York Times (Saturday, November 11, 2023): B12.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Nov. 9, 2023, and has the title “Frank Borman, Astronaut Who Led First Orbit of the Moon, Dies at 95.”)

The memoir Borman co-authored that is mentioned above is:

Borman, Frank, and Robert J. Serling. Countdown: An Autobiography. New York: Silver Arrow Books, 1988.

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