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Dedication

WHAT HEROES ARE MADE OF

On July 20, 1969, thirty-nine-year-old Buzz Aldrin, West Point class of 1951, became one of the first two human beings to land on the moon. He was the second man, after crewmate Neil Armstrong, to set foot on the lunar surface.

On November 29, 2016, eighty-six-year-old Aldrin became the oldest human being to reach the South Pole—and he nearly died on the journey. He was traveling in Antarctica, visiting the Amundsen-Scott Science Station, when he came down with a life-threatening lung infection. His National Science Foundation hosts evacuated him to McMurdo Station, then to a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand, for a week of rest and treatment with antibiotics.

Born on January 20, 1930, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, as Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., Buzz got his nickname from his little sister, who pronounced the word brother as “buzzer.” His parents soon began calling him Buzz (he took it as his legal name in 1988). Buzz Aldrin was the inspiration for the spaceman character Buzz Lightyear in the animated motion picture Toy Story.

After graduating third in his class from the Military Academy at West Point in 1951, Aldrin joined the Air Force, where he flew sixty-six combat missions in the Korean War. He downed two North Korean MiGs and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Despite Aldrin’s excellent academic and military record, NASA rejected him the first time he applied. But Aldrin was dedicated to his goals. He returned to school and earned a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

In 1963, he reapplied to NASA and was accepted. In the space program, he invented many of the concepts and techniques that have made space exploration possible. He devised procedures for maneuvering, docking, and rendezvousing spacecraft. He originated the practice of simulating low-gravity environments by training underwater. The techniques Aldrin developed enabled him (with astronaut Jim Lovell) to dock Gemini 12 with an unmanned Agena spacecraft and made possible Aldrin’s five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.

The supreme challenge of Aldrin’s career came on July 20, 1969, as the Apollo 11 Eagle lunar module descended toward the moon. The journey had been problem-plagued ever since the lunar module, carrying astronauts Aldrin and Armstrong, had separated from the command module orbiting the moon. (The third astronaut on the team, Michael Collins, remained in the command module.) The radio link from earth to the lunar module faded in and out. Tracking radar malfunctioned. An alarm sounded, warning the two astronauts that their overloaded landing computer was rebooting.

Then a new crisis arose: as the lunar module was about a mile and a third above the surface, Aldrin and Armstrong saw that their malfunctioning computer was flying them too high, too fast. They were supposed to be approaching a large, smooth landing site. Instead, they had already overflown almost half of the target area. Their present trajectory would drop them in a jagged-rimmed, rubble-strewn crater with boulders the size of railroad boxcars. It was a problem they had never encountered in simulations.

“We heard the call of sixty seconds [of fuel remaining], and a low-level light came on,” Aldrin later recalled. “That, I’m sure, caused concern in the control center. They probably normally expected us to land with about two minutes of fuel left. And here we were, still a hundred feet above the surface at sixty seconds. . . . When it got down to thirty seconds, we were about ten feet [above the surface] or less.”1

Armstrong took over from the computer, using the hand controller to manage Eagle’s descent. The computer set off alarms. Aldrin called out speed, altitude, and rate of descent information while Armstrong flew Eagle level at four hundred feet over West Crater. Once they had passed the crater, Armstrong resumed the module’s descent toward smooth terrain.

The module touched down at 4:18 p.m. EDT, and Armstrong coolly announced, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The lunar module had about twenty-five to forty seconds’ worth of fuel remaining when Armstrong shut down the engine—far less than the two minutes’ safety margin mission planners had intended.

The two astronauts remained in the lunar module for a little more than six hours. They decided to skip the five-hour sleep period on the schedule—who could sleep after landing on the moon? They spent those six hours preparing for their moonwalk. During that time, Aldrin radioed a message to the people of the earth: “I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”2 Then Aldrin, an elder at the Webster Presbyterian Church of Webster, Texas, took a Holy Communion kit his pastor had given him, and he took Communion on the surface of the moon.

When Armstrong descended the ladder and set foot on the moon, he famously said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin had not prepared any first words for his first footstep on the moon, but when he reached the bottom of the ladder, he turned, gazed at the moonscape, and said the first words that came to mind: “Beautiful, beautiful! Magnificent desolation!”

Buzz Aldrin has lived his life by the twelve West Point virtues, especially the virtue of dedication. He was dedicated to serving his country, dedicated to going to space, dedicated to creating new space travel techniques, dedicated to overcoming any obstacle that got in his way, and dedicated to experiencing everything the universe has to offer, from walking on the moon to walking on the South Pole. His life is a testament to the West Point ideals.

Buzz Aldrin would not have become an astronaut if not for Ed White, West Point class of 1952. White was a year behind Aldrin at the Academy, and they were best friends and teammates on the West Point track team. White enlisted in the air force after graduation and was stationed at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany, where he flew F-86 and F-100 fighter jets in defense of NATO. After Aldrin finished his tour in the Korean War, he was transferred to Bitburg and reunited with Ed White. They routinely flew missions near the Soviet border in planes that bristled with nuclear payloads.

After White’s tour in Germany, he earned his master’s degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan. He was dedicated to a career in space travel, and he was committed to taking the practical steps to achieve his goals. White saw that all seven original astronauts selected for NASA’s Project Mercury were test pilots. So he went to Edwards Air Force Base in California and enrolled in the Air Force Test Pilot School. When NASA chose the next nine astronauts from among two hundred applicants, White was selected. Once he was in the Gemini program, he urged Aldrin to apply as well.

Edward Higgins White II was born in November 1930 in San Antonio, Texas. He was a Boy Scout and a devout Christian who was active in his local Methodist congregation. A dedicated athlete, White competed for a place on the US Olympic team, hoping to run the 400-meter hurdles in the 1956 Melbourne Games. He was one-tenth of a second short of qualifying.

Aboard Gemini 4 on June 3, 1965, White became the first American astronaut to walk in space. Obsessive about every detail, White checked his camera equipment three times before exiting the capsule, worried he might have left the lens cap on. The EVA (extra-vehicular activity) began during the third orbit while the Gemini capsule was over Hawaii. White remained outside the capsule for twenty-three minutes, using a handheld oxygen-jet “zip gun” to maneuver while attached to the capsule by a tether.

White carried mustard seeds in the pocket of his spacesuit, a symbolic reminder of the words of Jesus in Matthew 17:20: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Once outside the spacecraft, White expressed exhilaration over floating in space. “I feel like a million dollars!” he radioed to crewmate James McDivitt. White’s joy while spacewalking made him reluctant to return to the capsule, and Mission Control had to order him back inside. Gemini 4 was over the Gulf of Mexico when White said, “I’m coming back in . . . and it’s the saddest moment of my life.”3

In March 1966, White was named senior pilot (second seat) for the first manned Apollo flight. His crewmates would be Virgil “Gus” Grissom (command pilot), who had previously flown in Mercury and Gemini capsules, and Roger Chaffee (pilot), who had yet to fly in space. The launch of Apollo 1 was scheduled for February 21, 1967.

On January 27, NASA engineers conducted a full rehearsal of the launch sequence with the astronauts strapped into the Apollo 1 capsule at Cape Kennedy’s Launchpad 34. One reason for the rehearsal was to practice emergency escape procedures. White’s job, as the astronaut in the middle seat, was to ratchet the hatch bolts loose so that all three men could escape in an emergency. During the test, an electrical spark ignited a flash fire, accelerated by the 100 percent oxygen atmosphere. White had no time to open the hatch. His body was found with his arms stretched over his head. He died attempting to save himself and his crewmates. White, Grissom, and Chaffee died of smoke inhalation and asphyxiation.

The tragedy highlighted design flaws in the original Apollo command module, from wiring flaws to the risk of using pressurized oxygen to the poorly designed escape hatch. After NASA’s internal review, these defects were fixed, and the Apollo program got back on track.

Ed White was laid to rest at West Point Cemetery with full military honors. In No Dream Is Too High, Buzz Aldrin remembered his friendship with fellow West Point cadet Ed White:

Ed was my good friend and colleague; he was also a major part of my inspiration to become an astronaut. In a couple of minutes, his storied life was over. I never had a chance to thank him for all that he had meant to me, or to tell him goodbye, although two and a half years later, I carried with me to the Moon a medallion in his honor. In some way, I have tried to honor Ed by the path that I have pursued.

Life is a gift, and none of us has any guarantees about tomorrow, so don’t miss the opportunity to tell your friends and family members how much they mean to you. Take the time to make that phone call just to say hello, or to write that note of encouragement.4

In his wallet, White carried an inspirational poem titled “It’s Up to You” by Edgar A. Guest. That poem expressed his intense dedication to his goals and his principles:

No one is beat till he quits;

No one is through till he stops,

No matter how hard failure hits,

No matter how often he drops.

A fellow’s not down till he lies

In the dust and refuses to rise.

Fate may slam him and bang him around

And batter his frame till he’s sore,

But she never can say that he’s downed

While he bobs up serenely for more.

A fellow’s not dead till he dies,

Nor beat till no longer he tries.5

Those words describe the way White lived his life. And they describe the way he died, trying to complete his mission and save his crewmates with his last ounce of strength, with his last breath. He truly exemplified dedication and all the other West Point virtues.

The forgotten astronaut of the Apollo 11 moon shot was another West Point graduate, a classmate of Ed White, Michael Collins, class of 1952. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin climbed into the lunar module Eagle and separated from the command module Columbia, they left Michael Collins behind. He remained in orbit around the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the Sea of Tranquility.

The moment his two comrades left him, Collins realized just how utterly alone he was, circling the moon, separated from his wife and children, his home world, and the human race by some 240,000 miles of empty space. Soon Columbia would swing around behind the moon, and he would lose radio contact with his crewmates and Mission Control. He later confessed that the thought made him a bit panicky.

“Keep talking to me, guys,” he radioed to Armstrong and Aldrin. And they talked back and forth by radio until the bulk of the moon blocked their signal.

Collins kept a journal as he orbited. On the far side of the moon, where he couldn’t see his distant home world, he wrote, “I am now truly alone and absolutely alone from any known life. I am it.”6

Armstrong and Aldrin landed safely on the moon. They would spend less than a full day on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, Collins waited, fretted—and sweated. The courage and dedication of the three Apollo 11 astronauts is shown by the fact that all three put the chances of a safe landing and return to earth at about fifty-fifty.

Collins wasn’t worried for himself. Instead, he was sick with worry for his two crewmates. “My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone,” he wrote in his journal.7 Collins imagined what would happen if the lunar module lost atmosphere or its engines failed. He would become the lone survivor of the failed Apollo 11 mission—the man who left his buddies on the moon.

Down on the lunar surface, Armstrong and Aldrin collected more than forty-seven pounds of lunar rock and soil and loaded it on the Eagle. Aldrin left a bag of memorial items on the surface, including a medallion honoring his late friend Ed White. They took photos, conducted scientific measurements and experiments, inspected the Eagle for damage, then pressurized the lunar module and reentered for about seven hours of sleep.

Back on earth, White House speechwriter William Safire had prepared a message for President Richard M. Nixon to deliver if the Apollo 11 voyagers became stranded on the moon. The message read in part, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.”8

After the lunar astronauts reentered the cabin, Aldrin accidentally broke a circuit switch that was part of the main engine starter mechanism. Aldrin worried that he had just stranded them on the moon.

Meanwhile, in lunar orbit, Collins wrote in his journal, “I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter. If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, . . . I will be a marked man for life and I know it.”9

In the lunar module, Aldrin found he could activate the switch by pushing it into the closed position with a felt-tipped pen. After twenty-one and a half hours on the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off at 1:54 p.m. EDT in Eagle’s ascent stage, bound for an orbital reunion with Collins and Columbia.

After the Apollo 11 astronauts returned home, Collins received a letter from famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in May 1927. Lindbergh, nicknamed “The Lone Eagle,” wrote in part:

Dear Colonel Collins,

My congratulations to you on your fascinating, extraordinary, and beautifully executed mission. . . .

What a fantastic experience it must have been—alone looking down on another celestial body, like a god of space! There is a quality of aloneness that those who have not experienced it cannot know—to be alone and then to return to one’s fellow men once more. You have experienced an aloneness unknown to man before. I believe you will find that it lets you think and sense with greater clarity. Sometime in the future, I would like to listen to your own conclusions in this respect. . . .

My admiration and my best wishes,

Charles A. Lindbergh10

Collins had feared he would be notorious as the lone survivor of Apollo 11. Instead, he ended up being the forgotten Apollo crewmember. Despite his essential role in the success of the mission, his name is rarely mentioned when the first moon landing is recalled. He doesn’t mind. He has often said he feels honored to have been a member of the crew of this historic mission. He didn’t orbit the moon for fame and glory. He went into space, in the finest tradition of West Point, for duty, honor, country.

Astronaut Frank Borman, West Point class of 1950, was commander of Apollo 8. He and crewmates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders flew the first mission around the moon in December 1968. Borman once told an interviewer, “West Point shaped my life. I have the highest regard for West Point as an institution. Although it has changed a great deal from my day, and I’ve received a lot of accolades for my work with the space program, nothing makes me more proud than to say I graduated from West Point.”11

Born in Gary, Indiana, in 1928 and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Borman was a career air force officer, serving as a fighter pilot with the Forty-Fourth Fighter Bomber Squadron in the Philippine Islands, 1951 to 1953, and as a flight instructor in the United States, 1953 to 1956. Borman logged more than six thousand hours of flying time as a military pilot. He returned to West Point in 1957, serving as an assistant professor of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics until 1960. He worked as a test pilot for the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School for two years, then joined NASA’s space program in 1962.

In December 1965, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell flew aboard the two-man Gemini 7 spacecraft, setting a fourteen-day spaceflight endurance record. Gemini 7 rendezvoused in space with Gemini 6A, piloted by Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford. The two crafts came within one foot of each other but did not dock. Borman later recalled, “The Gemini was smaller than the front seat of a Volkswagen bug. So staying in there for fourteen days with another person wasn’t easy. But Jim Lovell was great. We got along fine. We never had a bit of trouble.”12

In late 1966, NASA chose Borman to command the third manned Apollo mission. In January 1967, when the launchpad fire killed Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee, the future of NASA’s moon program was in doubt. Borman was appointed to NASA’s Accident Review Board.

“After the fire,” he recalled, “the head of NASA, Jim Webb, convinced Congress to stay off until NASA had investigated itself. We came up with a report that was very damning because we had frankly overlooked the fact that it was a dangerous test that they were doing.

“Finally, after NASA had made its report, then Congress had a turn at us. And I’ll never forget driving over to the Congressional offices where the testimony was to take place. In the car, Jim Webb said to me, ‘Now remember, Frank, don’t try to protect me, don’t try to protect NASA. The American people deserve to know the truth.’

“That was a wonderful example of NASA at its best. And I can’t imagine that happening today, as a matter of fact. People would be trying to figure out, ‘How do we spin this? How do we make it look good?’ But NASA, at that point, was probably as fine a government organization as has ever existed.”13

Borman’s testimony persuaded Congress to allow Apollo to resume its mission. NASA selected Borman to fly in Apollo 8 along with Bill Anders and his Gemini 7 crewmate, Jim Lovell. Apollo 8 went into lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968 and made ten orbits around the moon before returning to earth.

“Looking back at the Earth was a profound experience,” Borman recalled. “It looked so fragile from 240,000 miles. You have a hard time understanding there could be so much conflict when it looked so fragile.”14

In preparation for their Christmas Eve broadcast, Borman and Lovell had typed the opening verses of the book of Genesis on their flight plan. In a live broadcast to the world, the three Apollo astronauts took turns reading the first ten verses of the Bible. Anders read first, then Lovell, then Borman, who closed with these words: “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.’ And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.”15

These four astronauts from West Point—Buzz Aldrin, Ed White, Michael Collins, and Frank Borman—exemplify the leadership trait of dedication, the quality of being unwaveringly committed to a purpose that is greater than oneself. Dedication clarifies our goals and the tasks required to achieve them. When you are dedicated to a cause, you never wake up and wonder, What should I do today? You know. You persevere through opposition, over obstacles, and beyond exhaustion. Your dedication sustains you through every challenge until you achieve your objective.

If you are in business, you dedicate yourself to maintaining the best reputation for excellence and integrity, service to your customers, benefits to your employees, and giving back to your community. If you are in full-time religious service, you dedicate yourself to serving God, spreading his Good News, and ministering to others. If you are in government, you dedicate yourself to defending the Constitution, serving the taxpayers, and making your department run efficiently, with as little waste as possible, for the good of the people, not the bureaucracy. If you are in education, you dedicate yourself to instructing and mentoring your students, instilling values as well as dispensing information, and raising a generation of dedicated leaders.

In 2009, Rachna Choudhry and Marci Harris were discussing the need for a way for Americans to make their opinions known to lawmakers. Choudhry was a political campaign worker with degrees in political science (UCLA) and public policy (Georgetown). Harris was a congressional staffer with expertise in health reform and a law degree from American University. They agreed that the government had become unresponsive to the people.

The following year Choudhry and Harris founded a company called Popvox (after the Latin phrase vox populi, “the voice of the people”), with a website at www.popvox.com. It is a place where you can follow your lawmakers, voice your opinions on pending bills, and get personalized updates on legislation at the state and federal level. Choudhry and Harris founded Popvox to be a “transparent advocacy platform” and were gratified with their first success—a grassroots effort to persuade Congress to pay military families during a government shutdown.

In 2012, Popvox CEO Marci Harris told Fast Company that the key to the success of Popvox is dedication. She said, “A dedicated team with shared vision is one of the most valuable resources any organization can have—doubly true for a startup. It trumps funding, technology, gold-plated degrees or press. A dedicated team with shared vision can make amazing things happen, and still be standing long after others go home.”16

What is your great goal in life? What is your equivalent of walking on the moon or traveling to the stars? Whatever you dream of achieving, build the West Point virtue of dedication into your life.

Live each day fully dedicated to the great cause that gives your life meaning and purpose. Be passionate and focused. Live each day dedicated to bettering yourself, becoming stronger, wiser, more knowledgeable, and deeper in character. Always view your life as a work in progress. Keep reading, learning, experiencing, growing, and improving.

Live each day dedicated to being mentored and mentoring others. Recognize the power of influential relationships in your life. When you meet successful people, engage them in conversation. Ask them how they achieved their goals. Ask them the secrets of their success. You will be amazed at how eager people are to share their wisdom and help others succeed.

Live each day dedicated to the future, not the past. Don’t settle for conformity. Don’t settle for the status quo. Be an agent of positive change in the lives of others, and the world around you. Push the boundaries of imagination. Don’t accept what is; dream of what might be—then find ways to make it happen.

Live each day dedicated to lifting others up. Ed White wanted to uplift his friend Buzz Aldrin, so he persistently urged Buzz to become an astronaut. Because of White, who gave his life reaching for the moon, Aldrin walked on the moon and left a medallion in the moondust to honor White. Michael Collins wanted to uplift his friends Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and he was content to be the forgotten man in the orbiting command module while they got the glory of leaving footprints on the moon. Collins’s greatest terror was that he would have to go home alone. And none of these astronauts would have gone to the moon if not for Frank Borman’s candid testimony to Congress about the Apollo 1 tragedy—testimony that enabled NASA to continue reaching for the sky.

Remember the four West Point astronauts. As you ascend in your career, in your faith, in your education, dedicate yourself to uplifting others. Remember the West Point virtues, especially the virtue of dedication. Aim high, reach for the stars, and fulfill the purpose for which God made you.

Leave footprints in the universe that will stand the test of time.