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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Born in Eagle Rock, California in 1919, it was only natural that Mark Eaton, Jr. would enlist (1940) in the U.S. Army as his forefathers had been doing since Paul Revere sounded the call and responded by joining in April 1775 with other patriots of the” Lexington Alarm", signaling the start of the Revolutionary War. Their sons fought in the French and Indian Wars as well as the War of 1812 and their descendants engaged in the Civil War and later others in WW I. Mark served during WW II, Korea, and Vietnam earning all the stripes during his enlisted days, and following OCS in Jan '43, rose to his retired grade of Lt. Colonel. Two of his most memorable assignments were at the USAF Flight Test Center, home of the Experimental Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB and the Missile Training site at Vandenberg AFB both of which made great contributions to the exploration of space. He retired in 1965 with over 25 years of active and reserve time. In Dec. 1968 he participated in the Apollo 8, First Manned Saturn V Launch and First Manned Lunar Orbit Mission, by serving on board the USS Redstone, an instrumentation ship stationed in the South Pacific Ocean. He was at that time a civilian employee at the Pacific Missile Range.