Astronaut Alan Shepard

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Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998)

Rear Admiral Alan Bartlett "Al" Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts, and businessman, who in May 1961 made the first manned Mercury flight. Shepard's craft entered space, but did not achieve orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space, and the first person to manually control the orientation of his spacecraft.

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Shepard was diagnosed with leukemia in 1996, and died from complications of the disease in Pebble Beach, California, on July 21, 1998. He was the second astronaut who had walked on the Moon to die, Jim Irwin being the first in 1991. His widow Louise resolved to cremate his remains and scatter the ashes, but she died from a heart attack five weeks later on August 25, 1998, at 17:00, the time at which Shepard had always called her. They had been married for 53 years. The family decided to cremate them both, and their ashes were scattered together by a Navy helicopter over Stillwater Cove, in front of their Pebble Beach home.

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