On Thursday, February 4th, 2016, my childhood hero died.

Edgar Dean Mitchell was a hotshot test pilot, so good they actually altered the cockpits of aircraft to have him fly them because he was too large to fit otherwise.

He was the 6th man to walk on our moon.

He was the best of us.

Any family would be proud to claim him and I can.

I met him once. I was 12 and he was however old... It was a family reunion at an Episcopal campground on a lake, somewhere around Joplin.

I was in awe, so tongue-tied I could barely speak.

I had always been a space nut, even before I knew it ran in the family... I had just read "I will Fear No Evil" and "Number of the Beast".

For those of you who do not know of those stories... "I Will Fear no Evil" was the story of an obscenely rich man in some sort of post mini-apocalypse world. In a desperate attempt to stave off the Grim Reaper his brain is transplanted into the body of a beautiful young woman.

He only has a year but he... She... lives fully.

In "Number of the Beast" we meet Elizabeth "Slipstick Libby" Long

Born Andrew Jackson Long, it takes her almost a millemium and dying to come to a realization of herself.

Those stories reinforced my hunger for space... and they were a lifeline. It was the first time the concept of becoming who I truly was had even occurred to me as a possibility. Even put into a science fiction context, it gave me a way to hope, to survive...

It gave me the confidence to say to my 2nd cousin when I met him "You beat me there(The moon) but I will one day walk in your footsteps."

Later in life my sister became friends with him as they lived fairly close to each other. He knew of my transition... we were friends on FB and he saw the timeline I put up.

He was clear that he fully accepted me and wanted to meet me... it was planned for sometime this summer.

Now that will not happen.

Now we are left to celebrate the life of a hero, an explorer, one of the best of us.

Godspeed, Ed. May the universe greet you with endless wonder...