"End of an Era"

8 x 10

The last shuttle is coming home this week. It is the end of an era. Growing up in Titusville I am very familiar with space exploration and the space industry. As a kid I use to watch the Saturn Five rockets that transported the Apollo program into space and onto the Moon. Now those things were really big fireworks! You could feel them take off. When there was launch during school we would line up on the hill at Whispering Hills Elementary School facing east and watch the rocket head up through the sky. When the Apollo program was really going there would be wall to wall Winnebago’s done at the river waiting for the launch. Our little league fields were right down on the river so after games we would walk around between all the RV’s.

Between undergrad and law school I got a job at the Cape. I actually worked on the first space shuttle. My Uncle worked for NASA and helped me get a job with McDonald Douglass putting tiles on the shuttle. I worked on the rear upper elevon. I was a thermal protection mechanic. It was really interesting work. And it paid a lot more than the average summer job. Plus there was tons of overtime. For a while we were doing twelve hour days. That was tough. I don’t know how you could do that for longer than a couple of weeks.

I remember the Challenger disaster. I was driving home from work for lunch listening to the launch on NPR. My oldest son was only about 10 days old. When a got home my Mom was there with my wife and we turned on the TV and watched the coverage.

This painting is of the shuttle on the number 39 B. That’s the pad that is closest to Playlinda Beach which is the Titusville beach. That’s the south side of Canaveral National Seashore. You have the natural beauty of unspoiled and undeveloped land and the magic of the newest most modern technology. So in this painting I was trying to show the new technology against beauty of the land. Hope I got there.

Thanks for looking.