Posted on 12/07/2020 7:25:50 PM PST by SamAdams76
97 years old.
"The Right Stuff" immortalized him.
Lord God, Jesus Christ, rest the soul of Thy servant Charles.
In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Well, I have always admired Armstrong. I think his fame and celebrity is in an entirely different universe, a very rarified universe indeed. Neil Armstrong is in Charles Lindbergh territory, known to nearly every person on earth with access to knowledge.
That is a different kind of celebrity Hell. I am sure it is fun early on, but I’ll bet it gets old quick...
I did have an opportunity to see Neil Armstrong on stage with all the surviving Apollo astronauts at Oshkosh back in 1994...and that was just great! I seem to recall Jim Lovell talking about how terrible a gas problem Frank Borman had on Gemini 7...:)
It was just a round table discussion, just fascinating and fun.
Right in the middle of this event, a Concorde took off on the runway in full afterburner right behind this open air pavilion, and the entire audience turned to look at the roaring plane with four blue flames coming out the back, and instead of being annoyed, the Apollo astronaut currently speaking implored everyone to turn around and watch, because, he said “We are all watching up here too!”
I loved that. With all they had been through, they still loved seeing an aircraft take off in afterburner!
RIP Chuck! Prayers for his family
I think he meant that the producers had Yeager do a walk-on cameo as a barfly at Pancho’s. The Yeager character was not shown as a drunk.
The man, the myth, the legend. RIP
Back in the early 80’s he was visiting the UK, and was appearing on Good Morning Britain or some such show.
Back then, it was all the rage to be snarky and rude to Americans, especially on TV.
The female interviewer looked at Chuck and asked some sort of rude, superior snarky question. Without skipping a beat, he replied “It’s nice to be back because it reminds my why I hated England UK back then and today.”
(I saw this exchange, living in the UK at the time, and the exact words may be off a little, but the sentiment is 100% correct.)
Was he still living in Grass Valley, N Calif area???
Chuck Yaeger lived 57 years longer than John Lennon did and he lived for 40 years after Lennon was murdered...So, here you have the BGen air ace and test pilot Yaeger, who worked in very high-risk environments and situations; and then you have John Lennon, a musician, songwriter, Beatle, pop icon, peacenik, etc...and BAM!, he’s shot to death just outside the entrance to his home in NYC...Now, you would think that somebody like Yaeger would have bought it before he turned 40 and that somebody like Lennon could have been celebrating his 80th birthday back in October!
RIP JOHN
RIP CHUCK
Caught ‘em landing.
Ace in a day, too.
his book is one of the best reads ever.
Starbuck on aerial combat against Scar, the aliens’ top gun in Battlesttar Galactica:
This isn’t dueling pistols at dawn, this is war. You never wanna fight fair. You wanna sneak up behind your enemy, and club ’em over the head. You see, Scar understands that. And so do I. So, that’s why I’m gonna kill him.
40 years ago tonight he was gunned down in NYC.
I have no love for Lennon's politics but and some of his solo songs are super annoying, but I remember the night of his death very vividly. Also I appreciated what he did with The Beatles.
I found out about his assassination through Howard Cosell during a Patriots Monday Night football game. I have no idea who ended up winning the game that night because I switched right over to FM radio and started listening to the tributes.
“If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, your strategy sucks”
-Sun Tzu.
Chuck Yeager has a cameo in the movie, he’s the elderly bartender out at Pancho’s. A couple of the pilot/actors appear to offer a toast to Yeager in his scene.
IIRC from reading the book “the right stuff” was the ability to quickly shake off the deaths of friends and fellow pilots and to go on with the mission. It meant ice water in the veins.
When he was driving the pace car for the Indy 500 back in 86, he was boozing all day long in the pace car garage during the week (not on race day of course). The man had a legendary liver.
I was talking about the movie - sorry I didn’t clarify that. Watch it again and you may understand my take on the character.
“I used to stay up just to watch that sign off. The good ol days.”
—
Even if you weren’t into the video, you watched it anyway as a kid to catch all the last stuff on tv when you were up late.
The left is all over the internet calling him a racist and misogynist, etc. Disgusting people. Not one of them has the courage to do anything close to what Yeager did.
Neither did John Glenn or Scott Carpenter, but NASA overlooked that. Even in 1959, the US Government had rules for some and not for others.
**Well, I have always admired Armstrong. I think his fame and celebrity is in an entirely different universe, a very rarified universe indeed. Neil Armstrong is in Charles Lindbergh territory, known to nearly every person on earth with access to knowledge.**
By the mid 70’s Armstrong was still famous but not hounded by folks apparently. At least not one day at Quad Cities airport, Moline, IL. A funeral director (friend and co-owner of a plane with my dad) from nearby Aledo, IL had just dropped a ‘loaded’ casket for outbound air freight. He was driving past the passenger terminal when he saw a familiar face. He stopped, got out, and asked the man if he was indeed Neil Armstrong.
It was Neil, and turns out he was standing on the sidewalk waiting for his ride to Augustana College, in close by Rock Island where he was going to speak. He had been waiting for close to an hour, and thought the college forgot about him. The funeral director said, “Well, if you don’t mind riding in a hearse, I’d be glad to drive you there”. Neil laughed and gladly accepted the offer.
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