As fellow astronauts, other friends and loved ones gathered in Houston yesterday to honor U.S. "frontiersman" Captain Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., aka 'Gordo', 'Hot Dog', tonight one American couple shared Apollo 13 with their family for the first time.

Cooper, one of the "Mercury 7," died on Monday, October 4th at the age of 77.

He was born in Oklahoma in 1927.

In 1963, he was one flew 22 orbits in Mercury Faith 7. On that day, it was said that he flew "higher and faster than anyone in history."

In 1965, he commanded the eight-day Gemini V mission. He landed the flight with Charles "Pete" Conrad precisely on target, even though the capsule's automated systems failed.

In 1983, Cooper was immortalized in the movie The Right Stuff. The film protrayed Cooper as the astronaut who was so cool that he fell asleep in his Mercury capsule during the long countdown to launch.

This family of four is grateful for the path Cooper laid as a pioneer in space, so that those who went after him, like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, Fred Haise and Ken Mattingly, increased both their chances of success, as well as survival.

Learning of Cooper's death enables us to not only celebrate this one hero's life but the life of America's human Space program yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This includes the successes and lessons learned from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, Space Shuttle, Shuttle-Mir and Space Station expeditions.

On Friday, at a memorial gathering at Johnson Space Center in Houston, former U.S. Senator John Glenn, 83, the first American to orbit Earth, remembered the old days at Cape Canaveral as they trained for spaceflight.

"We were welded into a fraternity that had no equal at that time, or this time, for that matter," said Scott Carpenter, another of the original seven astronauts who led America to space.

"We regret losing Gordo," fellow Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra said. "He was one of our dear friends, not too bad a water skier, not too bad a pilot, but a heck of a good astronaut."

On Friday, speakers remembered his sense of humor and generous heart. Those who participated in the emotional memorial ceremony celebrated Gordon Cooper as one of their own and as a fearless pilot with the "right stuff."

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Gennady Padalka aboard the International Space Station paid tribute to Cooper by ringing the ship's bell three times.

"As we consider his life, we can catch a glimpse of the countless lives Gordon Cooper touched as a man, as a friend and an astronaut," said Henri Landwirth of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, who got to know the men when he ran the Starlight Hotel in Cocoa Beach. "Our nation and the world are better places because Gordon Cooper lived among us."

"These were the super-heroes of our time, and deservedly so," said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, who presented Cooper's widow, Susan, with a NASA Distinguished Service Medal in Cooper's honor.

We saw Apollo 13 tonight for the first time in almost ten years. As a wife and mother, I am awed by the courage of the wives who stood by their men. Susan Cooper, as much as Gordon Cooper, deserves that Distinguished Service Medal for believing in her husband, and trusting God and the crew in Houston as he took his heroic leaps of faith into space.

As citizens of this earth, we are grateful to Gordon Cooper, those before him, those along side him, including John Glenn, Walter Schirra Jr. and Scott Carpenter, three of the seven young men still alive today who were selected with Cooper in 1959 to lead the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union. We salute Gus Grissom, Alan Shephard, Deke Slayton, Chuck Yeager, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and all those on the ground leading the way.

NASA's Space program is the ultimate example of teamwork.

We are also grateful to actors Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan, Xander Berkeley, directors Philip Kaufman and Ron Howard, and author Tom Wolfe for having dared to tell these heroic stories. Thanks to you, our children can learn about these pioneering men and women, in a way that brings American history to life unlike any other storyteller - save perhaps the men and women, themselves.

Please keep telling these stories.

No doubt, they will inspire little boys and girls today to dream about going to the moon the way we did thirty-five years ago.

And thanks to people like aviation legand Burt Rutan and entreprenuers like Richard Branson, we look forward to the day that, we too, like the heroes before us, follow the trail blazed by Gordo Cooper.

For a professional bio on Gordon Cooper, go to:

To learn more about the future of America's space program, go to:

Inspire & Be Inspired(R). We certainly are.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful and "right stuff" living!

~ Jennifer King