Retired astronaut Commander John Herrington talks to a local kid at the Stillwater Community Center on Wednesday night.
As our nation celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first to put humans on the surface of the moon, Stillwater residents got the chance to hear first hand what it’s like to go to space.
The Stillwater Public Library packed the house at the Stillwater Community Center with people anxious to hear from Commander John Herrington, a retired astronaut with Oklahoma ties who flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s STS-113 mission to the International Space Station in 2002.
Herrington is a member of the Chickasaw Nation who was born in Wetumka. He was the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to go to space.
He says as a young man he seemed like an unlikely candidate to become an astronaut.
His family moved around and neither of his parents attended college. His mother dropped out of school at 15 and had her first child at 17. His father was a pilot “with a Ph.D. in experience,” he said.
By Michelle Charles