My father, George Barnum, was a true American Air and Space hero. Our family will always be proud of his many contributions to American history.

Dad was a Korean War Era Veteran of the US Air Force, becoming an aircraft mechanic, and training many other aircraft mechanics who served in Korea. For the rest of his career, Dad worked on aircraft - eventually becoming an engineer working for Bendix Aviation and Douglas Aircraft.

In 1965, the opportunity came up for George to move to Florida and work on the Apollo program as part of the effort to put man on the moon. This path was far from smooth and Dad came home from work worried about whether or not the US would ever achieve the destiny that JFK had set our nation towards of landing a man on the moon by the end of 1969.

Like true American heroes, the team of aerospace engineers persevered. George was very hands on in the program, and was one of the test conductors of the McDonnell Douglas stage - the third stage - of the Saturn V rocket. He was working inside of that stage on the launch pad, doing a plugs out test on January 26th, 1967 - when a fire broke out on board Apollo 1 at the top of the Saturn V -and the three astronauts - Gus Grisson, Roger Chaffee and Ed White - were killed. Dad told us that he felt the explosion and thought the entire rocket was going to blow. He said that if it had been a test with fuel onboard, more than likely man would not have made it to the moon by the end of the 1960's.

Dad worked extremely hard with all the different aerospace contractor teams to achieve the impossible. He was the McDonnell Douglas rep of launch operations – signing company approval of the launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft – which successfully lifted off the pad on July 16th, 1969, and landed man on the moon on July 20th.

While my father was extremely proud of his contribution to manned space flight, he was also sensitive of the fact that he did not have a college degree. Dad was self taught and extremely smart - and later taught trigonometry to individuals supporting McDonnell Douglas aircraft worldwide - teaching technicians from Kuwait and from China.

George Barnum was a true American hero, and without him – and thousands of men like him - man would never have landed on the moon. Your country and I thank you, Dad, and I am very proud! I love you!