The year was 1972. The 3-man Apollo 16 crew of astronauts were minutes away from re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere following an 11-day journey to the moon and back.
Meanwhile, in the Pacific Ocean about midway between the U.S. and Australia, a 21-year-old James Phelps was wrapping up a semi-mandatory 2-year stint in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier. The ship was on course to retrieve the Apollo 16 astronauts once they splashed down in the Pacific.
Phelps — it should be noted here that the hero in this story is our late father — was a third-class Yeoman, responsible for such tasks as clerical work, personnel records and office management. Still, he was among an estimated 3,000 crew members on the ship that was twice part of American space history.
In the years after his service he would sometimes recount the story, downplaying it as just another day on the ocean — a fact coming from a man who shared an elevator with a seasick newbie spewing into his Dixie Cup; lapped up tummy grease from a fat-bellied superior to transition from pollywog to shellback; witnessed a fellow sailor die from blunt-force trauma to the head. Truth is, the old man could have told a lifetime of stories based on the two years he was on that ship. He certainly knew all the rules to a number of card games, and how to mop a floor, the Navy way. But picking up a crew of astronauts always stood out as a fascinating tale, and one he should have been more proud to tell.
However, Daddy never was talkative. I only learned of the famed Apollo mission when, at 17, I claimed one of his old Navy-era jackets bearing a pair of patches, among them an official NASA Apollo 16 patch. In the two decades that followed, we talked maybe half a dozen times about his experience with the Apollo mission.
I had always imagined him being part of some gang of rag-tag sailors tossing out a hefty rope and pulling the spacecraft aboard using a complicated pulley system to hoist the astronauts aboard. My imagination was, as it usually is, a bit far-fetched from the truth.
In the weeks before Daddy died last summer, I asked again about his Apollo adventure. He remembered seeing a bright-orange ball as it streaked across the sky, downward toward the ocean, for several minutes. He recalled that the Navy had welcomed several TV station camera crews aboard the ship to capture the event. But, mostly, he remembered that he was hot and, therefore, opted to retreat to the coolness of an office, where he would watch the historic event unfold on television.
Months later, the Ticonderoga would recover Apollo 17, the last crew to go to the moon until the 2026 mission by Artemis II. By then Dad was off the ship and back home in Arkansas with his wife and two young children. Yours Truly wouldn’t enter the picture for another dozen years.
I can’t help but wonder if now there’s a young Yeoman aboard the USS John P. Murtha who will find this historic moment so fascinating that he shrugs it off as another day in the Navy and retreats to the comfort of a naval office to watch it unfold on TV.
Like Dad, I’ve been watching as a spacecraft makes history — 54 years later, and on television — and pray for the astronauts’ safe re-entry and splashdown in the same Pacific Ocean where many a young sailor like James Phelps served his country and longed for a placed called home.
Joel Phelps is publisher and editor of arkadelphian.com. Contact him by email at editor@arkadelphian.com.