Cape View, the only elementary school in Cape Canaveral – which is for children aged 5 to 11 – is closing at the end of the school year.
Cape Canaveral is the part of Florida where rockets lift off from Kennedy Space Center. That’s why people call it the ‘Space Coast’.
The decision was made due to fewer numbers of pupils and high maintenance costs. Now for the school that watched the Apollo rockets launch to the Moon, Artemis II will be the final launch visible from its grounds.
Former pupil Paul S. Davison was a pupil there when Cape View opened in the 1960s. “I lived on the Space Coast from 1961-68 while my father was an Air Force officer stationed there and I attended Cape View from 1964, when it opened.”
Paul remembers the first human spaceflights. “The first manned launch that I would have seen would have been Alan Shepherd’s in May 1961.” Alan Shepherd was the second person and the first American to travel into space.
When it came to watching rocket launches, TV was best for the close-up view, before moving outside: “Our best view at first was on TV. After a few seconds after liftoff, we could go outside and watch the rocket climb above the trees.”