Written in the Past

“You Can be Replaced!”
As a Baby Boomer who grew up in the public schools, I vividly recall the overcrowded classrooms. Our teachers were undoubtedly overworked (and probably underpaid). In the early 1960s, the authorities in our school corporation decided to put a television set in each class.
We would tune in every day to watch a woman teach arithmetic, while a man was the science instructor. If we were well behaved, our teachers would sometimes allow us to watch the TV for fun things, like the World Series and the exciting events at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The 1960s were the years of American astronauts, who thrilled us with their exploits. They were our heroes, and we felt as though they were our friends.
One of them was a Lieutenant Colonel named Virgil “Gus” Grissom. Gus was a decorated fighter pilot in the Korean War, and later became a jet instructor in Texas. In 1959, he was chosen to be one of the original seven Mercury astronauts. We were especially fond of Gus, who was born not far from us in the small town of Mitchell, Indiana.
On July 21, 1961, he piloted the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft for fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This flight achieved an altitude of 118 statute miles, traveling 302 miles downrange from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, which was later named the Kennedy Space Center. In 1965, he commanded the first manned Gemini flight. There didn’t seem to be anything our Gus couldn’t do.
In 1966, Gus transferred to the Apollo program. He was assigned as commander of the first crewed mission, AS-204, with Senior Pilot Ed White, the first American to walk in space, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. There had been a number of complaints about the condition of the space craft during the test runs, but NASA officials figured that these three experienced veterans could handle any problems that came their way.
Only they couldn’t. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were asphyxiated while working in the module on January 27, 1967. We were shocked and saddened at the untimely deaths of our heroes. Gus grew up in a Christian family, and the minister who had baptized my mother and grandmother was asked by Gus’s parents, who were members of his church, to go to Washington DC to participate in the funeral. It was quite impressive, but all we could think of was the sad loss of the lives of three young men.
CBS newsman Eric Sevareid paid tribute to the astronauts a few days later: "Grissom and White and Chaffee - mortals who aspired to the moon and eternal space-were returned to the earth today from which they came and to which we all belong. They had lived life more intensely in a very few years than most of us do in our lifetimes and they shall be remembered far longer. They were among the men who wield the cutting edge of history and by this sword they died. . . ."We are told they will be replaced. This only means that other such men will take their places. The three cannot be replaced. There never was a replaceable human being."
Jesus affirmed our uniqueness in Matthew 10:29-31: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.