The Making of an Astronaut
In 2010, the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame (DAHF) posthumously inducted Theodore C. Freeman as a member. According to the program brochure, he “might have become America’s first man on the Moon, if not for his untimely death from a plane crash in Texas…he was the first member of the U.S. Space Program to lose his life”. He was in NASA’s Astronaut Group Three along with such astronaut notables as Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan and Alan Bean, all expecting to become Apollo pilots. That was back in the 60s. He was the second USNA graduate to train as an astronaut. Alan Shepard was 10 years before him as the first USNA graduate.