Grissom, Chaffee, and White Remembered

More than half-a-century after a tragic launchpad fire claimed their lives, the crew-members of NASA’s Apollo 1 mission were honored with a monument at Arlington National Cemetery. 

Families of the three, deceased astronauts requested a Latin motto meaning A rough road leads to the stars be carved into the monument’s stone. 

On 27 January 1967–three weeks ahead of the mission’s scheduled launch date—astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee perished during a preflight simulation when an electrical fire broke-out in the pure oxygen environment of the Apollo1 command module. 

The mission was to be the first crewed flight of Apollo program, and the first low-Earth-orbital test of the Apollo command and service module—one of two principal components of the United States Apollo spacecraft which landed astronauts on the moon between 1969 and 1972. 

Bonnie Lynn White, daughter of one of the late astronauts stated, “You know, they were family men, but they were professionals. They were daring and they had fun. They were just great people and I would like to see people really go and look into who they were." 

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson joined families who laid flowers at the memorial site. 

When tragedy befell NASA’s Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle missions, the lives lost were honored with memorial services at Arlington National Cemetery. The Apollo 1 astronauts—who were laid to rest decades earlier—received no such memorial services. The disparity prompted the decedents’ families to petition for a monument. 

Jamie Draper, Director of the Air Force Space and Missile Museum said of the Apollo 1 tragedy, "The incident really shook not only the space program, but America to the core. Without their sacrifice, the program would not have been reconfigured and we would not have made it to the moon."

FMI: www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/#/