He was 12 when his father died, so Jim Lovell, the young man who would be commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission and an American hero, took on a steady stream of jobs to help his mother make ends meet.
In high school in Milwaukee, he served food and washed dishes in the school cafeteria, hauled boxes around a warehouse and worked with a tinsmith putting gutters on houses.
“And for two summers I worked on a farm,” he recalls. “I baled hay and cleaned out the pig pens. I got a glorious 10 cents an hour” in the early 1940s.
During college, he worked in restaurants and in the kitchen of a private home.
With all his food-service experience and a son who is a chef, it’s no surprise that Lovell owns a restaurant in Lake Forest, where he also has a home.
