Moon mission inspired Viroqua teen 

The Apollo 11 astronauts blasted off for the moon the summer Mark Lee was about to become a senior in high school. He already knew he was going to be an astronaut.

“I grew up in Viroqua, Wis., and went to a one-room school when Alan Shepard launched back in 1961. That’s when I decided I wanted to be an astronaut, just like every kid on the planet,” said Lee.

It didn’t hurt that another inspiration came from a farm just down the road from the Lee family farm.

“Deke Slayton, one of the original seven, grew up in Sparta, a little less than 30 miles away from where I grew up,” he said. “There were a lot of things in the news there because of him. If Deke Slayton can do it from a farm in Wisconsin, why can’t I? Putting the reality to the job, anybody from anywhere can become an astronaut.”

The summer of the historic moon landing, Lee had already applied for admission to the Air Force Academy and was working as a lifeguard at the local pool. He was working at the pool on July 20, 1969, when Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility.

“We stayed at the pool because we didn’t want to miss anything,” Lee said. “I stayed there and I remember afterwards walking out on the veranda by the pool and looking up at the moon. You could see it. It was a nice clear night, and I remembering saying, ‘Someday I want to go there’.”

Lee was accepted by the Academy, where he earned a degree in civil engineering. After gradation, he went to pilot school and flew F-4s in Japan before earning a master’s degree at MIT. In 1984 he was chosen as an astronaut candidate and successfully completed the one-year training in June 1985. He went on to make four shuttle missions, beginning with the May 1989 mission that sent the Magellan probe on its way to Venus.

In September 1992, Lee and fellow astronaut N. Jan Davis made history when they became the first married couple on a space mission. In a 1994 mission, Lee became one of eight people in the world to “walk” in space untethered, freely maneuvering 150 miles above Earth with a newly designed jet pack.

“It’s just unbelievable. You can’t even describe how amazing it is to be up there, looking at the Earth and flying around like your own little satellite,” Lee said.

Lee retired from NASA in 2001. Today he serves as special projects director for a Madison engineering firm. He remains in demand as a speaker, a role he uses to spread the word of education and focusing on goals. He recalls going to a career fair in La Crosse and meeting a girl who wanted to be an astronaut.

“I pulled her into a room and told her to go to the best schools she can. Get some flying in there, try to go to NASA. Seven years later she showed up at my door down at NASA. She’d gone to MIT got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, got a job at the Johnson Space Center and was going to be an astronaut. That’s just amazing how much drive kids can get. They just need a little bit direction. They don’t always know what to do. You can have some pretty significant influences on kids.”

And while Lee said people of all ages are fascinated by his true tales of space exploration, it’s the children who represent the future in space.

“Kids nowadays, you tell them somebody their age is going to walk on Mars. It’s going to be a fact. If they want to do it, they can make it. Doesn’t matter where you come from,” he said. “I stress the importance of education. I encourage reading and getting into the technologies and science. There are always ways to get scholarships and funding. Kids too often don’t stay focused enough to follow through on their dreams. If you work hard, there isn’t anything that isn’t possible.”

Which, if you think about it, sounds very much like the Apollo mission itself.