There was no way Kevin Andel was going to miss this retirement party.
Andel, 58, of Round Lake Beach, made the long drive to Triton College’s Cernan Earth and Space Center to say goodbye to an old friend.
No, it wasn’t a Space Center employee. It was a spacesuit, the one worn by Apollo 10 astronaut Gene Cernan in 1969.
For the past 40 years, his spacesuit has silently stood as testament to the marvels of space travel and Cernan’s Apollo 10 mission that paved the way for Apollo 11, NASA’s first mission to land on the moon. Cernan would later be the commander on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the final crewed mission of NASA’s Apollo program and the last time humans set foot on the moon.
On Sunday, the Space Center held a retirement party for the spacesuit and 12 other items from the Apollo 10 flight that are soon heading back to Washington, D.C., after four decades at the community college in River Grove.
Andel fondly recalled coming to the space center at its original location in 1974. The current building opened in 1984.
“I’m a huge space junkie,” Andel said with a smile.
“I was someone who lived during the end of the space age in the 1970s. The initial space age was John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and, of course, walking on the moon,” Andel recalled.
Andel was among about 20 other space junkies who visited during a two-hour event Sunday.
Center Director Kris Kovach McCall said she and others at Triton felt they owed the spacesuit a fond farewell in light of the approximately 1.5 million visitors the past 40 years.
Triton College had the items because of Cernan’s ties to the area.
Born in Chicago in 1934, Cernan grew up in the Triton College district towns of Bellwood and Maywood. He graduated in 1952 from Proviso Township High School in Maywood, which is now called Proviso East.
His spacesuit and other items – including Cernan’s gloves, a long-sleeved NASA shirt bearing his name, and booties – are being returned to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., for restoration.
“In the last 40 years, conservation has changed for artifacts, whether it be paper or fabric or metal or whatever. … When you think about it, this flew in 1969, it’s almost 60 years old and a lot of materials will degrade over time,” Kovach McCall said.
Creases in fabric can hasten the degradation, she said. So can bright lights. So, the lights aimed at the spacesuit are dimmed. Dust is no friend, either, she said.
“The other big killer is humidity. It does get humid here in the summer. This case is not air-tight. We were not able to get the humidity down enough to make the Smithsonian happy.”
“The other thing is, the Smithsonian wants to get away from the long-term loans,” Kovach McCall said, adding “I’m hoping to get it back.”
In the meantime, Bianca Verheecke, 28, of Oak Park, made sure her son Dean, 4, saw a real spacesuit in person.
“It’s special. It’s not every day you get to see something that was so far away from the Earth,” said Bianca, a social worker who got into the spirit by wearing a NASA T-shirt.
As for Dean, he didn’t have much to say. But he was seen later holding a $30.95 plush spaceship purchased from the gift store that offered a 10% discount Sunday.
Bianca tried to jog his memory.
“What did we watch a few weeks ago? Artemis?“ Bianca asked Dean. “We watched the launch. We watched the splash landing.”
Dean was so enthralled with Artemis, she said, that he’s getting a rocket ship for his 5th birthday on Friday.
Retired oncologist Rosemary Carroll, who is “over 60” and resides in Western Springs, made her first visit to the Space Center for the event.
“I was glad to see this in the paper. I wanted to come over before it takes a trip,” Carroll said. “It’s nice that it’s here. I don’t have to take a trip to Washington to see it.”
Carroll said interest in NASA and space travel is growing since Artemis II flew around the moon a few weeks ago.
Seeing rockets like Artemis II blast into space had Carroll recalling when she was a girl watching the liftoffs for Apollo and Gemini rockets in the 1960s.
“They used to have ticker tape parades (for returning astronauts),” Carroll said.
Andel eagerly noted that NASA plans to again send astronauts to the moon.
He’s intrigued by the potential mining for minerals along with building a permanent lunar base. He and son Alex, 20, won a space trivia contest in the center’s planetarium.
According to the NASA website, we will see astronauts walking on the moon in early 2028 when Artemis IV is scheduled for the first lunar landing since 1972.
Cernan commanded that flight, Apollo 17. He was the last human being to walk on the moon.
Mike and Rica Buoso, both 40, of the Portage Park neighborhood in Chicago, could not resist bringing their son Ander, 2, to see the spacesuit.
“We took him to the Adler Planetarium a couple of weeks ago and he just loved it,” Rica said.
Mike, a self-described “space nerd,” recalled being “really into the Comet Hale-Bopp” which passed by Earth in 1997.
As Kovach McCall noted, Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal for the lunar landing by Apollo 11 a few months later.
“Everything. They went through all of the procedures to within eight miles of the moon. Gene Cernan famously said we painted a white line all the way to the moon. All Neil (Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew) had to do was follow it,” she said.
She said Cernan eventually did get to walk on the moon’s surface, in December 1972.
“He was the last person to lift his foot up off the surface of the moon. For a long time, he was adamant. He expected to live long enough to see somebody else put fresh footprints on the moon. And that didn’t happen,” Kovach McCall said.
Cernan was 82 when he died in January 2017.
Autographed copies of his book “The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s Race in Space” are available in the gift store for $100 each. Non-autographed books cost less.
Without the spacesuit and artifacts, the facility’s staff is working on plans to retool their exhibits to some Earth-friendly topics to be determined, Kovach McCall said.
“We are the Earth and Space Center,” she said.
The last day to see the spacesuit and other items from the Apollo 10 mission will be June 6.
The center is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday except Memorial Day and June 5, and on Saturdays from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Triton College is located at 2000 Fifth Avenue in River Grove.
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
