By the end of 1968, America was as ready for a Christmas miracle as it ever had been. In the previous 12 months, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, the war in Vietnam continued with no end in sight, and turmoil on the streets had turned the summer into one long memory of anger, hatred and violence.
Just before Christmas, a mighty Saturn V rocket lifted off from Cape Kennedy on a pillar of flame, propelling three astronauts on the furthest journey man had ever made, a journey that would take them to a place no human eye had ever seen — the dark side of the moon. And on Christmas Eve, they arrived.
Monday at 9 p.m. on WBBM-Ch. 2, Life Magazine presents “Life’s Greatest Holiday Stories,” a one-hour special that focuses on a group of heroes whose actions are synonymous with the holiday values of hope, faith and charity.
Included in the special are profiles of Jimmy Stewart and Bob Hope; the “best boss in America,” Aaron Feuerstein; San Francisco’s Rev. Cecil Williams; the town of Billings, Mont.; people who adopted Romanian orphans; and the Boys Choir of Harlem.
Also included is the saga of Apollo 8, the mission that took astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders into the unknown, supported by the hopes, dreams and hard work of NASA and the American people.
“It’s coming up on its 30th year, just a year from now,” says Lovell, now an author, sought-after speaker and aspiring Chicago-area restaurateur. “Time passes fast.”
Apollo 8 gave humankind its first firsthand look at the side of the moon turned permanently away from Earth, and the voyage had a strong emotional impact, says Lovell. “It ended the year on an upbeat, a year that was really, I would say, disastrous for the U.S.
“It was just a year of turmoil, and we managed to do something that all Americans could be proud of. They were all part of this particular adventure. And then to go into orbit around the moon on Christmas Eve — someone who was staging a scenario, a movie producer or a theater producer, couldn’t have picked a more opportune, appropriate time to do that.”
On that Christmas Eve, as Apollo 8 slipped behind the moon, the communications signal connecting the spacecraft to Earth was broken. Drifting 69 miles above the lunar surface, the three men were utterly alone, and for 15 minutes were unable to talk to Earth. A quarter of a million miles away, people walked out into their yards and gazed at the sky. They weren’t looking for the Christmas star or Santa Claus, they were straining for a glimpse of Apollo 8 as it circled the crescent moon.
When Lovell’s voice finally broke the silence, a cheer went up. To mark the moment, the astronauts read from the Book of Genesis. But for Lovell, there was a more private moment, later chronicled in the film based on his second mission, “Apollo 13.”
“If you saw the movie, you saw Tom Hanks doing the thumbs-up gesture where he put his thumb over the Earth. That was really done on Apollo 8. I told Tom, one of the most thoughtful parts of the Apollo 8 flight was looking back at the Earth and seeing how small it really was.
“This was the first time man had seen the Earth as it truly is. We had pictures from orbiting spacecraft, but still the Earth was the massive body just 100 or so miles beneath us. But now we were some 240,000 miles away, which in terms of space is nothing, but you could put your thumb over the Earth and completely hide everything you’ve ever known.”
And perhaps a little bit of Christmas grace rubbed off on Lovell. Following the release of “Apollo 13,” many became aware of the tale of the oxygen-tank explosion that occurred on the way to a moon landing, forcing Lovell and fellow astronauts John Swigert and Fred Haise to depend on their lunar module to survive the trip back to Earth. Apollo 8 had no such backup.
“Apollo 8 was perhaps the most successful of all the Apollo missions as far as everything going right,” says Lovell. “Of course, we did not have a lunar module, and had we had the problem we had on Apollo 13, I would probably still be in a big, elongated orbit, going out 240,000 miles and coming back with Borman and Anders, or stuck in an orbit around the moon.”
Does he feel like a hero? “Oh, no, I just happened to be lucky and in the right place at the right time, a little bit of luck on a flight that could have been a complete disaster.” He’s also a man with great timing. “On Apollo 8, we got there just at the right time, on Christmas Eve. On 13, to take off at 13:13, the explosion occurred on April 13 . . .”
What does he do each April 13? Lovell laughs, and replies, “I call up Fred Haise and tell him, `It’s Boom Day.’ “
