Sharing moonwalk memories
Only 12 humans have ever walked on the moon. Charlie Duke Jr. was the 10th.
Duke, lunar module pilot for Apollo 16 and the youngest person to walk on the moon, shared his stories of space and faith at the annual Niagara Falls Prayer Luncheon at Club Italia, Thursday.
“Being an astronaut is not just a wave to the crowd and a launch to fame and fortune,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. It was a very demanding, yet very exciting job.”
Duke, 83, who served in the U.S. air force, was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA in 1966.
“Most of us didn’t volunteer for fame or fortune,” he said. “We volunteered for the adventure and a desire to explore.”
Over 11 days in April 1972, Duke and fellow astronauts Commander John Young and command module pilot Ken Mattingly were in space.
“I was really excited,” he recalled. “It’s hard to describe the emotions and the excitement … like a little boy on Christmas Day and birthday and everything all rolled up into one.”
He and Young spent 71 hours on the lunar surface, including moonwalks that lasted a combined 20 hours.
“We were 20,000 miles away and it was the most incredibly beautiful sight I have ever seen,” he said, recalling looking at the earth from the moon.
“It was breathtakingly beautiful. The pictures don’t do it justice … that jewel suspended in the blackness of space.”
When he returned to earth, he found fame was fleeting.
“In the last 46 years since I landed on the moon, I maybe had one person recognize me and say, ‘Hey, didn’t you land on the moon?’ I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say.”
And fortune? There was none.
“We didn’t get a million dollars to go to the moon, despite what the National Enquirer said,” he said with a laugh. “I was a lieutenant colonel in the air force, I got
paid like every other lieutenant colonel.”
Following his retirement from the astronaut program in 1975, Duke entered private business. He found wealth, he told the crowd, but not the peace he was seeking.
“I was searching for something that would give me purpose in my life.”
He told the crowd that, despite being a regular churchgoer since he was a boy, he had never considered himself a religious person.
That changed after a friend invited him to attend a bible study class.
“For the very first time in my life, I started listening to the scriptures,” he said. “I listened with not only my ears, but my heart.”
Duke became a committed Christian in 1978 and he and his wife Dorothy started the Duke Ministry for Christ.
This was the 45th year for the event which is hosted by the Niagara Falls Church City Network, a network of pastors and Christian leaders from across the city.
Previous guests included Roger Woodward, who famously survived being swept over the falls as a seven-year-old in 1960, and 1972 Summit Series hero Paul Henderson.