Original scrapbook presented to Alan Shepard by the children of Manchester [Vermont] Elementary School following his flight on the Apollo 14 mission, 1971. The scrapbook comprises approximately 150 18 x 12 pages to which the students have affixed original letters, poems, drawings, clippings related to the mission, and more. The contents are introduced by a letter to Shepard from teacher John Slade: “I am writing this letter to praise you and the others connected with the Apollo 14 mission. We are all very proud and proud to be Americans. The triumph of our Space Program encouraged all of my classes in the fifth and sixth grade Social Studies to compile this album as a gift to you, Mrs. Shepard, and your family…. Congratulations on your remarkable feat, which has given all of us a tremendous patriotic spirit….”
The drawings exhibit a charming and imaginative variety of images related to the mission, including the astronauts themselves, various spacecraft, reimagined mission logos, American flags (in a variety of colors and configurations), and a number of fanciful and highly amusing narrative scenes. In one, the astronauts fish through an open window of the capsule while waiting to be picked up after splashdown; in another, one mouse sadly observes to his pal, “I always want to go to the moon, but I don’t now, they stomped on all the cheese!”
The students’ prose and poetry is no less engaging. Many examples vividly recall some of the more memorable incidents of the mission, as in Michael Senecal’s observation that “That golf ball must of really flew. I wish my father could hit one like that….” (Indeed, Shepard’s famous golf drive from the lunar surface was the clear winner among the students’ favorite recollections.) Other moments are documented with equal enthusiasm, as in a carefully rhymed account by Kenneth Howard: “At Cape Kennedy there was a bang / Of course it couldn’t be, the spacemen drink Tang…. They then were sailing through the air / President Nixon said ‘look up there!’ / Apollo Fourteen landed in the sea / with a great big splash the shape of a V.” Jay Lombardy confesses that his father isn’t cut out for the rigors of the space program: “My father said you must go crazy with all the buttons you have to push and all the training.” Perhaps recalling the recent harrowing near-disaster of Apollo 13, Rocky Greene hints at the apprehension that attended the mission right up until its successful completion: “Then you’ll see a big splash / and you’ll hear a big bash. / Then you’ll see them come out / After the big doubt.” Though Debbie Frost breezily admits that “I don’t know much about space,” Kathleen Bouchard expresses a surprising maturity and awareness of some troubling issues of the day: “On one hand it is good to go to the moon because it helps scientists research. And it might help the world someday, but on the other hand it is bad because it costs a lot of money and we could use that money to stop the war, to stop the pollution, and other problems we have….” Accompanied by a letter of provenance from the daughter of the original owner, who was in the employ of the Shepard family for more than 35 years.
In very good condition, with the expected wear to the homemade covers, scattered toning, soiling, and light wear to interior, and tears to some of the oversized clippings. Accompanied by a letter of provenance, stating that the collector had been a former employee at the Shepard household from 1952 through 1988, during which time she received a number of items directly from his parents, this scrapbook being amongst them.
A unique document brimming with young America’s fascination with space travel! RRAuction COA.
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