Remembering our high-flying fallen: It's that week again

It's not an artful picture, but it is real life... a real-life corner that is the ongoing memorial to what we sadly but resolutely recall each year—what via NASA has come to be known as "Day of Remembrance," or a day within the single week's span in late January when coincidentally over time all three of our American space disasters and loss of life have occurred.

This year, today marks the 30th anniversary of the Jan. 28 loss of Challenger and its seven astronauts at just 73 seconds after launch, as they climbed into orbit, due to overlooked  cold weather effects on the solid rocket booster O-rings that were supposed to keep hot gases in their place. Three of the crew had been among the pioneering women and minorities that Nichelle Nichols had helped to recuit for NASA to open up the astronaut ranks, nearly a decade earlier.

That's their mission patch logo to the left, here at a simple memorial in the original, historic and now preserved Mission Control Room at Johnson Space Center in Houston—nerve center of American space flight from Gemini through the shuttle. I snapped this shot during a visit last fall.

Of course, Jan. 27 was the date in 1967 when the Apollo 1 capsule fire, sparked by an electrical short in pure oxygen with a bulky main hatch, claimed the lives of its crew trio in seconds during a routine pre-launch test at the Cape for what would have been the first use of the new capsule in space; their mission patch is to the right. And Feb. 1, 2002 marks the loss of pioneering shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven as it began orbital re-entry, breaking up under routine stress just 6 minutes from landing due to unexamined damage to a wing's leading edge from ice damage at launch. (That loss happened after JSC's new modernized Mission Control was opened, and this historic place was preserved as it was—without their mission patch as well [though it is prevalent elsewhere].)

All were tragedies... all stemmed from unintended human error and oversight... and all three marked a case when the lives given provided hard education and lessons learned, to move forward after not just mourning but  investigating the loss.


By the way: Between the mission logos, as a reminder of how sometimes tragedy can be averted in a mishap with ingenuity and luck, is the Apollo 13 lunar module mirror claimed from Aquarius after it served as a lifeboat for the safe return of that crew when their command module Odyssey was crippled after an oxygen tank shorted and exploded, turning their moon landing mission into one of simply triumphant survival.

If ever there was a concept that truly evoked Kirk's "Risk is our business!" speech, NASA's "Day of Remembrance" is it. The NASA webpage has information, video and memorials to all three ships and crews.

It's the kind of day to pause and reflect how far we have come, and how much further the way will be until we realize our future—and the additional lives that will surely be sacrificed as the cost to get there, despite best efforts, along the way. As I always say, I was a NASA kid before I was a Trek kid...and it's one of the reasons why I've always been a booster of all things space and future-looking, including my stint with Enterprise in Space.

Thoughts on June 11: Spock again illuminates McCoy

Or, rather, Leonard Nimoy illuminates DeForest Kelley.

It seems here in the Blog Age I've settled into a tradition each year of celebrating De's life career on his Jan. 20 birthday ... and using the anniversary of his passing on June 11, 1999—today—to reflect on what he's meant to me, to fandom, and to the world. Nothing radical there.


But I look back at my Trekland posts on the major markers of his death—the tenth anniversary, and then the fifteenth—and realize that, like all history and anything connected with the non-Prophets' linear existence, the passing years only shed more light, more texture and more nuance on what it is we already know.

So it was this year with Leonard Nimoy's own passing Feb. 27, and how I caught my own thoughts and reaction, upon hearing the news, first shifting to 6/11/99 and De—and then comparing and contrasting the two, and reflecting on first fandom and then our culture's reaction and modes of today... as I wrote about for Star Trek Magazine just a few days later for the rushed first edition after Leonard's passing. Very proud of that piece, as once again sometimes the simplest writing turns into my favorite.

Come to think of it, it's where my thoughts went when we lost Majel in 2008, and even grand old producer A.C. Lyles a year back. With Gene so long gone, De continues to be my adult anchor and reference point to all Trek, it seems. Hmmmmm.

One thing that has not changed, in fact perhaps accelerated by Leonard's passing, is the ongoing stampede of fans and appreciators of De's role of McCoy and his humble, understated performance overall. What I wrote about that explosion last year, sparked by finding my first Trek T-shirts (above), has not only mushroomed, but the awareness of it as well — especially among younger fans who can take their 24/7 remastered streaming fandom and see it all for themselves, much quicker, and go online and spread it further.

When I finally shed a professional veneer during our last interview and confessed to De that he and McCoy were both my favorites, he laughingly cracked a great retort: "Well, where were you in the 60s when I coulda used you up, against Bill and Leonard?" I've told that story more than once, but it occurs to me now: I think he'd love to shoot it back at all his new fans today, as well...and be just as appreciative.

On losing Leonard: the first social mourning in Trek

I know it has been about seven weeks since Leonard Nimoy finally lost out in his battle with COPD.  On the 11th hour at deadline, official Star Trek Magazine held up a few days to include mention of his passing—and turned to me to do so. 

Very honored to do that, and very proud of the piece… especially from the angle of how, in 2015, we all experienced the moment and insight together: a real paradigm change, brought home by this central nexus in so many lives. And had we taken Spock for granted all these years?


STM's Issue 56 for Summer will be a full-on tribute issue in a few weeks, but Issue 55 for Spring is on newsstands now, with Spock on the cover of course... and this is how it opens:

Just one segment of the layout:

Family wishes for Leonard memorial gift donations

Not mine, but forwarded to me—Marietta, near Atlanta, GA

Since Friday, life for me has been an overwhelming mix of feeling and fielding. 

I have tried to share my reflections on Leonard Nimoy in media everywhere —Twitter, Facebook, podcasts like a special The Ready Room, television like Sky News in UK/Europe, radio (Boston's WXTK) — everywhere, except right here on my own blog. 

But it's coming.

Meanwhile, in a telling way, you know where my head was from my very first tweet:

And many more followed.


For now, let me share the family's wishes for those wanting to make donations or memorial gifts in Leonard's name:

Everychild Foundation
PO Box 1808
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

COPD Foundation
20F Street NW, Suite 200-A
Washington, DC 20001 

Beit T'Shuvah Treatment Center
8831 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034 

Bay-Nimoy Early Childhood Center at Temple Israel of Hollywood
7300 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

RIP, Leonard Nimoy: So many talents—but Spock's #1

FInal Vegas Khhaaan Trek convention appearance, August 2011

Happy 95th, A.C! You were great in the Oscars' memorial

One good thing about Facebook is that birthday reminder function—and last Saturday, up popped A.C. Lyles on mine. He would have been 95.

It was a great reminder that I had meant to regale you all after he rightfully turned up in the Oscars' memorial reel (right) ... after I let his actual passing last Sept. 27 get by without getting wistful about A.C., this living legend of Paramount and yet another piece of the Treklander tapestry—if not an unlikely one.

“A.C.”—no one ever called him Andrew Craddock or Junior—never worked on any Star Trek per se, but as a former theater usher boy-turned-producer emeritus and goodwill ambassador for Paramount, you can bet he overlapped Star Trek in all kinds of ways.  For one thing, his last office for decades had been in the Hart Building, where all the spinoff Star Trek writers and assistants over the years were officed—including Gene Roddenberry himself. More on that later…

What’s more, A.C. was a publicist in the postwar days at the studio when among others he helped promote one young Jackson Deforest Kelley as the studio’s latest contract player—and later stood up as his best man when De and Caroline got married in 1945.

A.C. must have been good at it—he was also best man to another actor you may recall: Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy, in 1952. That’s why, along with roles as the unofficial or official Hollywood liaison to Washington under four presidents, of course it’s A.C. who’s guiding The Gipper during his post-presidential tour of the Next Generation set in this iconic series of pics (right), during the shoot of season finale “Redemption” on April 18, 1991 (with Michael Piller (left), Patrick Stewart and Rick Berman).

 
Yep, A.C. was Paramount’s ambassador to every event where regaling was in order, happy or sad—and “regale” is the verb that best comes to mind when you have that many decades of stories you can recount first-hand—or perhaps stretch a bit.  I saw him both crack jokes or roast raw about honorees at Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters award luncheons since 2007 (at left, meeting student PPB visitors in Sept. 2011) ; Mike Westmore asked him to speak at the dedication of the Westmore family’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2008 (below), and he did the honors for De Kelley at his old friend’s memorial program on the studio lot in 1999.

In fact, when I talked to A.C. for our De Kelley memorial issue for Communicator, the old softie confided he was shocked when De, whom he knew to be very ill with his stomach cancer at the time, just had to get dressed up and make it to the lot for A.C.’s 80th birthday party in 1998 — thankfully recorded in this snapshot (right). It was to be De’s last public appearance before his death just eight months later. 

Indeed, everyone eventually got a visit to A.C.'s fourth-floor Hart enclave, where among the sights were posters of his own produced movies AND a hand-crank silent-era camera used on Paramount’s landmark silent film Wings, the very first Best Movie Oscar winner from 1927—and the movie that enraptured young A.C. into his cinematic infatuation back home in Jacksoniville, Fla.  The most striking element of his office decore, though, were the dozens of framed, red-matted 8x10s of his friends in the biz from the Forties to the Aughts that lined the walls.

Who knows how many visitors he invited in for a photo with him before the massive wall o’pix… but it took until a random lot visit I made in June 2011, when something just told me I should check in on A.C. and say hi, before I took my turn in his chair. Something must have told me I’d better do it that day, for while I saw him later at Pacific Pioneer Broadcast luncheons and even helped introduce him to students there once or twice… I’d have no idea that office visit would be the last time I’d ever see him on the lot.

And even then, as he had for years—well after her five seasons on Voyager were up—A.C. always ended our visits with “And give your lovely wife a kiss hello for me, too.”

For the charm of A.C. was far more than knowing him as a spellbinding talker and a living Hollywood memory wall. Anyone and everyone who worked on the lot at Paramount knew A.C., because he made it a point every day to introduce himself to any face he did not recognize, no matter how low or how high on the totem pole it might appear to be sitting. And that new face, in turn, quickly learned several points about A.C. from colleagues—or the man himself:

—The fact that he knew everyone "in town," and had since Edison invented film… and had a story or two about them ALL;

—That he drove a gleaming, cream-colored '62 Thunderbird convertible, always smartly parked in the producer’s lot for all to admire;

—That he was the most dapper dresser you ever saw, every time you saw him, no matter where—made even sharper still against his eternal SoCal tennis tan;

—And that everyone was his friend. Especially the ladies.  Even tourists on the studio tour (right, in 2008), whom he loved to regale with impromptu stories when he happened to spot a group on the main promenade. Especially the ladies.

In fact, for the Star Trek writers—and especially their mostly female assistants—A.C.’s “good morning” and “good evening” look-in as he passed their open doors en route to the Hart Building’s tiny elevator were a daily rite of work. Especially so when his cologne tended to pre-announce his presence a couple of minutes beforehand!

And when A.C. stopped you, or tangented off with a typical “That reminds me of the time Ronald Coleman…”  … you listened. And tried to will yourself to etch it into memory.

Paramount hosted a celebration in that memory, to that memory, right on the studio lot Nov. 11 (left). The day was done up right: many of those legendary red-matted photos from A.C.'s were brought over to the back wall of the Paramount Theater lobby, his friends and colleagues over the decades spilling out to the lawn and some good eats afterward. Thankfully, Paramount has been doing us all a favor in recent years, and had set A.C. down and walked him all over the lot to record hours of his memories and tales on film—and at his memorial we were treated to parts of it.

My own thoughts were drawn, mistily, to that afternoon—could it already be 14 years now?—when they’d done the same thing for De… and now here, like A.C. that day, were others on stage to speak and laugh and share their awe of this icon’s wonderful life. Heck, that last photo of A.C. and De together was snapped in this same lobby as well.

They ended A.C.'s program with that sneak peek at a big chunk of his memory tales on film—where we all instantly realized that the top speaker of the day was, of course, the ol’ story spinner himself. A.C. was still the best show of them all.

And why not? It’s the old Hollywood maxim:

With some blockbusters, you just can't make a sequel.




All photos except Regan set visit tour  and De-A.C. 1999 are the author's; copyright and use reserved.

Happy birthday, Jimmy—we do miss you

You would have been 94 today.

So many accolades are already out there, but here's my simple one today:

I was a friend, late... but a fan always.

Nobody takes the newbies under the arm like you did:

—outside Bochum, Germany, October 1995