The Man Who Brought Home Earth: Stories of Bill Anders

America lost one of its true heroes recently—a man who also happened to have taken one of the most famous photos of all time.

Maj. Gen. William A. Anders was an Air Force pilot and a U.S. Ambassador to Norway. He served his country in various other roles, including as the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and founded a museum that celebrates aviation history. But he’s best known as one of three astronauts who flew on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, during which he captured one of the most iconic and influential photographs in history. Earthrise is said to have even inspired the environmental movement. As an astronaut, Bill also inspired a generation of young Americans to pursue careers in the military, engineering, math, and science—including myself.

He was one of my heroes growing up, and I’m lucky to have known him personally. I got to know Bill and his wife Valerie through the support they’ve given to the Smithsonian over the years. Maybe it was our love of science, growing up as military brats, or having shared the same busted front tooth as a kid that had to be covered by an embarrassing silver crown, but something caused Bill and I to hit it off immediately. My friendship with him left me with many stories. To let you know the kind of person he was, here are a few of my favorites.

As Bill told it, this first story begins when the Apollo 8 spacecraft went into orbit around the Moon. Frank Borman, the commander, and Jim Lovell, the command module pilot, positioned themselves on one side of the spacecraft. Together, they would be the first people to complete one full orbit around another planetary body. Meanwhile, Bill, the lunar module pilot on the flight, watched from the other side of the spacecraft.  The crew patiently followed their instruments as they ticked off their position around the Moon. 

Finally, Frank exclaimed, “We did it!  We’re the first people to circumnavigate the Moon!”

While he and Jim began to celebrate, Bill said drily, “Check your yaw.”

Frank looked at him curiously and floated over to the instrument panel to read the position of the spacecraft. There he saw where Bill had secretly changed the orientation of Apollo 8 so that Bill alone was the first person to circumnavigate the Moon—if only by a few microseconds.

Frank looked at him and sighed, “You son of a -----.”

I can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of this event.  And honestly, I don’t want to. I feel that Bill, as a graduate of the Naval Academy, is entitled to a few “sea stories.”

Knowing that I was a Marine Corps brat and that I had graduated from Marine Officer Candidates School, Bill used to say, “When I graduated from the Naval Academy, I was allowed to pick which branch of the service I wanted to go into. I went into the Air Force because I didn’t like the idea of landing on aircraft carriers in the Navy, and I didn’t qualify for the Marines because my parents were married to each other.”  Usually, we were with a big group of people whenever he told this story, too.

File URL

By far the greatest story of Bill Anders's life has to be about his wife Valerie. They met on a blind date and married in 1955 after Bill graduated from Annapolis. After 68 years of marriage, you can imagine they had been through everything together. I was with them for one of their anniversaries, and I was touched by the fact that they still stopped to celebrate even after all those years when most people forget the date. One of my other favorite memories of them as a couple was when we were all going through the tables set up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8. Bill wasn’t happy with where some people were sitting, so he began moving the place cards around. Valerie tried to get him to stop, “Bill, you can’t do that!”

Bill turned and looked at her with his hands out, “Valerie if they can send a man to the Moon…”

Bill was also multi-dimensional. How do you top being one of the first people to orbit the Moon (if not the first!) while bringing back one of the most incredible photographs in history?  Bill’s career didn’t end with being an astronaut or working in the government.  In the private sector, he was vice president of General Electric, executive vice president of Textron, chairman and CEO of General Dynamics, and founder of the Heritage Flight Museum. Ultimately, Bill became one of the most financially successful former astronauts.

From his successes, he and Valerie started a philanthropic organization for the benefit of educational and environmental issues. The list of honors and awards he received throughout his life is too numerous to mention here, but he did receive the 2023 Michael Collins Trophy for Lifetime Achievement from the National and Air and Space Museum.  As my son Max once beautifully said, “It was like Bill was always looking for the next stone to skip across the water.”

Perhaps one of the greatest surprises about Bill was his deep love of science, particularly geology. There were only a few astronauts that I ever met who enjoyed the science behind the lunar landings, and none more than Bill. On almost every visit to his home, he would take me through his extensive collection of rocks, fossils, and meteorites. I remember him showing me rare pieces of such things as the Allende meteorite, some of the oldest rocks on Earth from Jack Hills in Australia, and a fossil coprolite that he used to trick people into licking. (A coprolite is fossilized dinosaur poop.)  It’s unfortunate for everyone that he didn’t get to walk on the Moon. The scientific return from a Bill Anders lunar mission would have been incredible. Unfortunately, as the lunar module pilot for Apollo 8, his next assignment would have been as the command module pilot, and he didn’t want to go back to the Moon and not walk on the surface.  After serving as the backup command module pilot for Apollo 11, Bill left NASA and did not fly on another Apollo mission.

However, even though he didn’t walk on the lunar surface, I have evidence that Bill is the first person to set foot on Mars!  When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021, Bill sent me a photograph of him stepping on a Martian meteorite in his collection.

As friends, I feel that Bill and Valerie were always looking out for me. In particular, a few years ago they endowed my research at the Smithsonian. The gift that they have provided is allowing me to help the next generation of young scientists conduct research to advance our understanding of the Moon and Mars. It has also enabled me to investigate planetary analog sites in some of the most remote places on Earth, such as the Australian Outback and Icelandic glaciers. Getting funds from someplace like NASA or the National Science Foundation is notoriously competitive, and Bill and Valerie’s endowment allows me to conduct the pilot studies as a way of proving that my research objectives can be met. This gives me a step up when writing proposals. And it’s just like Bill to have recognized this advantage. Historically, in a room full of intelligent and competitive people, he was always one step ahead of everyone else.

To sum it up, who was this guy who brought the world this incredible photograph called Earthrise? Who could have created this iconic image that places the Earth into context with the vastness of space while capturing a moment in time that calls all of us to question our place in the universe?  As Bill famously said, who could have “gone all the way to the Moon only to discover Earth?” 

Well… I sometimes remember the adage, “Only Nixon could go to China.”  As it applies to Bill, he was focused, determined, and a badass. (Not to mention a terrible backseat driver.) Yet, here was this tough guy who brought back one of the most beautiful images in the history of mankind showing us how delicate the Earth is. 

However, Bill was also thoughtful, loving, generous, intelligent, engaging, and sensitive.  He wouldn’t say he was a hero for flying to the Moon. To him, it was the guys fighting in Vietnam at the time. But to me, he was a boyhood hero and an inspiration who became a good friend. He left an impact on some many people’s lives, which reminds me of another story from ancient Greece that I feel sums up Bill and the effect of Earthrise.

It was Prometheus who brought us fire.