As the story goes, the statue of the late Apollo 13 astronaut and Denver native John “Jack” Swigert in the U.S.Capitol almost didn’t make it up the capitol steps and in the door, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell says.
Lovell will be in Colorado on Saturday, along with Apollo 13 lunar module pilot Fred Haise and NASA flight director Gene Kranz, to posthumously honor Swigert and celebrate the mission’s 45th anniversary at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum’s annual gala.
The story of the statue, which represents Colorado in the capitol building,- is just one of many Lovell has of his late friend.
“You see the statue is sort of white — it had color on it because the spacesuit and flag and the patch — and (Capitol staff) said ‘wait a second, no. No statues in here can have color. We only have marble or bronze. That’s it, we don’t allow anything else in here’,” Lovell said.
MORE: Read our interview with Jim Lovell
But that federal curator who barred it from entry — after previously approving the design — was no match for Nels Lundeen, brother to the Loveland-based creators of the statue, George and Mark Lundeen.
“Nels is just one of those people who will not be denied … he’s just about as stubborn as the day is long,” Lundeen Studios gallery manager Vanessa Atkinson said. “He found a high school group of Boy Scouts and started throwing cash at them and got them to drag it into the rotunda.”
The coup was successful, and the dedication ceremony went on as planned the following day, Lovell said, adding that Swigert would have likely approved of the rebellous action.
Swigert, who was portrayed by actor Kevin Bacon in the 1995 film “Apollo 13,” is best known as the command module pilot that stepped in at the ninth hour to replace astronaut Ken Mattingly, who NASA pulled from the mission after he was exposed to measles.
But Swigert is also one of Colorado’s most famous sons: he grew up in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, graduated from East High School and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado. An exact replica of the statue in Washington, D.C., stands watch over the B gates train platform at Denver International Airport.
Swigert became an astronaut in 1965. Apollo 13, which launched on April 11, 1970, was his first and only space mission.
Two days into the mission, an oxygen tank onboard exploded, causing the mission to abort, stranding the crew in space, and causing Swigert to utter the famous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Virginia Swigert, who still lives in Denver, says her brother Jack was an enterprising kid who worked several jobs — including two Denver Post newspaper carrier routes — in order to save up for pilot lessons.
“Jack worked hard on paper routes. He also went and got tadpoles and sold them for a nickel a piece … until one day my mother walked outside to a bunch of frogs and that was the end of that business,” she said. “It wasn’t a surprise he would be an astronaut. He took his first solo flight on his 16th birthday.”
Lovell is thrilled he gets to come back to Colorado to honor his old friend, who he remembers as an extremely competent astronaut who actually developed the malfunction procedures for the command module.
“He didn’t train for about the two months before launch, really, because most of the simulators and other things were hogged by the primary crew, so he felt like he had to earn his wings every day,” Lovell said. “But in reality, he was very, very competent. If I had to replace Mattingly with anybody, it would have been Jack Swigert.”
In retrospect, Lovell says wouldn’t change a thing that happened on Apollo 13.
Why? They worked the problem together and got home safely.
“Everytime a new crisis came up, we had to analyze the crisis, and fortunately the solutions between ourselves and Mission Control were the correct ones,” he said. “So either we lucked out on that whole thing and didn’t get ourselves in trouble, or we were thinking.”
Laura Keeney: 303-954-1337, lkeeney@denverpost.com or @LauraKeeney
More: read our interview with Jim Lovell at dpo.st/apollo13lovell.
