"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Frank Borman


This 1968 portrait of Apollo-8 astronauts William Anders, Frank Borman, and James Lovell by Hector Garrido appeared in an exhibition on the year 1968 at the National Portrait Gallery.
The year 1968 was marked by rioting in the nation's black ghettos and mounting protests over the war in Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and there had been a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. But as Time pointed out in its year-end summary, 1968 closed with an event that was bound to overshadow these other happenings. In late December, three astronauts (left to right)—William Anders (born 1933), Frank Borman (born 1928), and James Lovell (born 1928)—had embarked on the first successful human orbit of the moon, and on Christmas Eve, the trio reported live from their Apollo 8 spacecraft. The full implication of this achievement could not yet be understood, Nevertheless, Time could not help but conclude that of all the people who had made news in those past twelve months, Anders, Borman, and Lovell were the right choice for 1968's Men of the Year. -- NPG
Wikipedia gives this capsule biography of Frank Borman:

Frank Frederick Borman II (born March 14, 1928) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, businessman, rancher, and NASA astronaut. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. As of 2020, he is the oldest living former American astronaut, eleven days older than Lovell.  
The Time magazine cover naming Anders, Borman and Lovell “Men of the Year” came out on January 3, 1969.


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