Volume 11 , Issue 14

May 20 1963 - Remembering 1st Astronaut of Oklahoma

Space Rendezvous at Night called Feasible; Parole Board Hearing Lures Gov. Bellmon; Kennedy's Jet Zips to Record; Stateless Soldier Winning Battle; Russian Pilots Leaving Laos To Red China; Cooper's Flight Last In Mercury Project, Space Official Hints; Well Done, Gordo; Political Figure Dies at Cordell.

Remembering Oklahoma's 1st Astronaut . . . In one of those front-page headlines there was a news article dated May 20, 1963, headlines that read: "Cooper's Flight Last In Mercury Project, Space Official Hints." There were other headlines, also, of Oklahoma's first Astronaut Gordon Cooper, 36-year-old from Shawnee, Oklahoma, and his homecoming at Cocoa Beach, Florida, Sunday afternoon, May, 1963. That headlines read: "Well Done, Gordo!"

The news article stated that a huge oil-cloth streamer held aloft by a group of giggling teenaged girls proclaimed "Cooper as the calmest, coolest, cutest of All the astronauts." Cooper's mother was Hattie Cooper from Shawnee, Oklahoma.

This was Astronaut Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit flight around the earth. It was shortly before the sunset on the third orbit, that Cooper released from his "Faith 7" a small capsule, five-3/4 inches in diameter, containing two flashing lights. It was the first time that a satellite had been launched from a manned satellite. It was launched by a small spring device.

The purpose of the unusual experiment was to determine the feasibility of flashing lights as a reference point for sighting and rendezvousing with another object in space. To test Cooper's ability to spot the beacon, he turned his satellite away and then turned it slowly back and he picked up the lights through his capsule's port hole.

In that same article on the front page of The Oklahoman, Dr. Robert C. Seamans, deputy director of the civilian space agency, said Cooper's flight had been so successful that he thought it quite unlikely there would be another Mercury flight.

I seemed to vaguely remember my dad taking us to Shawnee, Oklahoma (or was it Oklahoma City) to a motorcade for this Oklahoma Astronaut Gordon Cooper. We were upstairs, it seems in a building, watching Cooper's motorcade and streamers following it. It seemed my baby sister, Amber, and Mom and Dad and myself and perhaps another girl (Annie Arganbright) might have been with us. That was 49 years ago and the memories are as I said earlier ... vague. Were you there that day?
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