In the Late 1950S the Soviet Union shocked the world by placing a small satellite-Sputnik-in orbit around the Earth. Treated as a technological Pearl Harbor in the United States, the Russian achievement prompted the federal government to create a civilian organization, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to manage the American space program. By April 1959, NASA had selected seven military test pilots to serve as the country's first astronauts in the race with the Soviets to see who could put the first human in space. One of the seven Americans picked for this ambitious effort came from the small southern Indiana community of Mitchell. Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom would go on to become the first man to fly in space twice and to give his life in NASA's attempt to meet President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely home by the end of the 1960s.

Ray E. Boomhower is managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society Press's quarterly magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History