Wally Schirra

Walter Marty 'Wally' Schirra Jr. was born on March 12, 1923, in Hackensack, New Jersey, into a family of aviators — his parents had both been barnstorming pilots. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1945 and became a naval aviator, flying 90 combat missions and downing two MiG-15s while on exchange with the Air Force during the Korean War. As a test pilot he helped develop the Sidewinder air-to-air missile, becoming one of the first pilots to fire it in live trials. In April 1959 NASA named him to the Mercury Seven, and Schirra brought to the astronaut corps a reputation for meticulous engineering discipline leavened by a well-known sense of humor.

Schirra remains the only person to have flown in all three of America's pioneering crewed programs — Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo — logging 295 hours and 15 minutes in space across three missions. On October 3, 1962, he flew Mercury-Atlas 8, orbiting Earth six times in his capsule Sigma 7 in a nearly flawless engineering flight that conserved fuel and validated the spacecraft's systems. In December 1965 he commanded Gemini 6A and executed the first true space rendezvous, maneuvering to within roughly a foot of Gemini 7 and station-keeping for hours — a technique essential to every later docking and lunar mission. During that flight he smuggled a harmonica and small bells aboard and, after wryly reporting a 'UFO' to Mission Control, played 'Jingle Bells,' the first music performed in space. In October 1968 he commanded Apollo 7, the eleven-day first crewed Apollo flight, which shook down the redesigned Command and Service Module in Earth orbit and restored confidence after the Apollo 1 fire.

Schirra retired from NASA and the Navy as a captain shortly after Apollo 7, his three-mission career having spanned the entire arc from America's first tentative orbits to the doorstep of the Moon. He joined CBS News as a consultant, sitting beside Walter Cronkite to co-anchor coverage of the Apollo lunar landings and translating spaceflight for a rapt television audience. In later years he worked in business and remained a genial public ambassador for the space program, his 'Jolly Wally' persona softening the image of the steely test-pilot astronaut. Wally Schirra died on May 3, 2007, at the age of 84, remembered as the consummate flying professional who bridged three generations of American spacecraft.