My Grandad was Dorris W. Wilton. He lived in southern Illinois, mostly Alton, for all his life. He was brilliant, quiet, funny, a semi-pro baseball-player in the 1920’s, an outdoors-man and fisherman. He was also perhaps my greatest positive role model and influence, my childhood and lifelong hero. Those who have read my books known that I have written about him often. Despite Grandad’s brilliance, he never had the chance to go to college; he married young, supported his family first as a railroad flagman, holding lanterns aloft at night to signal trains to slow down or stop or switch tracks. He then worked in industry, at Owens-Illinois Glass Company, where he rose into management positions. And finally found his way to McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, again in management and as a ‘trouble-shooter,’ again without any advanced education.

As I say, he was my hero. And one of the heroic aspects I was aware of as a young boy was that my grandad was involved–very involved–in the Mercury (and later Gemini and Apollo) Space Program. He never made a big deal of it, but my grandmother did. And I was fascinated by the books, papers, and models scattered about the house, where I lived with my grandparents for two full summers. So when Alan Shepard, and later Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper, flew into ‘outer space’ and eventually orbited the Earth, it was a matter of special pride in our family, and to little Dougie.

My grandad died suddenly in February of 1965, a loss that haunted me for decades. I never inherited his brilliance–in being able to take apart a fishing reel and put it back together, to do difficult math equations, to even fix the ‘electric brain’ (first computer) at McDonnell-Douglas that no one could get to work, or to help send men to the moon. (I did, luckily, inherit his love of the outdoors and sense of humor). But every time there was a successful space mission through the decades I would feel a special little swelling of pride, and with the occasional tragedies, the grief hit hard. I always felt a small part of it, somehow, through my feelings for my grandad.

Grandad was also a great patriot, sending his only son, Dorris Jr. (Wilbur) off to WW2, where he served with great distinction. Every single day of the great war, from Pearl Harbor on, Grandad meticulously tended, updated, and collated a series of 23 huge (24″ by 28″) leather-bound scrapbooks detailing every major battle and campaign of the war. I eventually inherited this extraordinary collection, and the books now reside in a special D.W. Wilton World War II Collection at Southern Illinois University.

All of which is to say that my personal, inherited sense of patriotism, my admiration for my grandad, for intelligence and clear thinking, for decency and patriotism and traditional American values, has been deeply offended over the last ten years. As has been the case with millions of my countrymen-and-women. (But notably, not millions of others.) That my pride-of-country has been powerfully shaken. My faith in my fellow citizens, those my grandad taught me to respect and somehow serve, has been assaulted. And thus it was that yesterday, with the safe arrival of Artemis II’s Orion back to our blue planet, I felt a great upwelling of emotions. Many of them unfamiliar for some time. As Kathy said, ‘It’s so wonderful for something GOOD to finally happen! Something to be proud of!’

And it is. As indicated, I have my own little ‘connection,’ in my own heart and head. But we all–Americans and dwellers of Planet Earth–are connected in a great accomplishment of humanity. Of human beings doing their best–through expertise, hard thought, commitment, vision, belief, intelligence, teamwork, and other attributes that we used to like to think of as especially ‘American’. Turns out maybe they’re not. But maybe they’re not totally lost either. And maybe they can be reclaimed.

We maintain the hope that they can be. And will be. And going back to the moon, and successfully coming home–to this gloriously beautiful gem of a planet–is to me a manifestation and realization of that hope.

Sticker and several photos are from a Time-Life book–‘Project Mercury, The Flight of the Freedom’, published 1964–from my grandparents’ house. Now kept in my office.

(This is my latest Substack post. You can follow/subscribe there at ‘Notes From The Campfire@douglaswoodauthor. https://substack.com/@douglaswoodauthor )