{"id":165212,"date":"2026-02-23T01:40:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/165212\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T01:40:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:40:33","slug":"john-young-grew-up-in-college-park-and-walked-on-the-moon-he-also-smuggled-a-sandwich-into-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/165212\/","title":{"rendered":"John Young grew up in College Park and walked on the moon. He also smuggled a sandwich into space"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLLEGE PARK, Fla. \u2013 I don\u2019t think enough people care that we\u2019re going back to the moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before sunset on Saturday, Jan. 24, I took this photo of it from College Park, where I grew up and still live:<\/p>\n

The moon from College Park on Jan. 24, 2026. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

The moon can make any decent camera look like a toy, but the joke\u2019s on her. Like with all celestial objects, there\u2019s no easier way to really appreciate how far away the moon is than by trying to take a good picture of it and ending up with a speck.<\/p>\n

Look closely and you\u2019ll see another speck toward the bottom right of my picture. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s Delta flight 867 from Los Angeles to Orlando, an Airbus A321neo that left before lunch and landed on time ahead of a winter storm that canceled thousands of journeys across the U.S.<\/a> the very next day.<\/p>\n

[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it\u2019s FREE)<\/a> | PINIT! Share your photos<\/a>] <\/p>\n

The flight was no more than 4 miles away from me when I took that picture, but the moon stays an average of 238,855 away from us at all times, or about 30 Earths, according to NASA. Even though it\u2019s more than 25% the size of Earth and has a surface area comparable to Asia\u2019s, the moon\u2019s sheer distance makes it look no larger to us than the Delta jet does.<\/p>\n

My point is, four humans are about to put themselves in a pressurized metal container in which they will travel that absurd distance, and hopefully return, during Artemis II<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Those four \u2014 NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency\u2019s Jeremy Hansen \u2014 will be the first people to see the moon up-close in 53 years. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a crazy thing to do and would make any explorer blush, which is perhaps why I don\u2019t think enough people care that we\u2019re going back to the moon. <\/p>\n

For that matter, I also don\u2019t think we\u2019ve named enough things after John Young, the late NASA legend who grew up here in Orlando \u2014 and yes, I do understand the irony of typing that from a newsroom on John Young Parkway.<\/p>\n

Young was the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. He was commander of the first Space Shuttle mission, the first astronaut to orbit the moon alone \u2014 doing so in 1969 as commander of Apollo 10 \u2014 and the ninth to ever walk on the moon, stepping out for three days of exploring during Apollo 16, which he also commanded, in 1972. <\/p>\n

Astronaut John Young leaps from the lunar surface as he salutes the U.S. flag at the Descartes landing site during an Apollo 16 extravehicular activity, April 21, 1972. The lunar module “Orion” is on the left. The lunar roving vehicle is parked beside Orion, and the object behind Young in the shadow of the lunar module is the Far Ultraviolet Camera\/Spectrograph. NASA photo by Charles Duke Jr. (NASA (public domain))<\/p>\n

I say there aren\u2019t enough things named after Young, that\u2019s my hill, but I concede there are nice tributes to him, here and there. <\/p>\n

You may have noticed his portrait at the red light on Princeton Street between Orange and Mills avenues, painted by artist Briana Vega. If so, you may wonder why the artist also took the time to paint a sandwich.<\/p>\n

Portrait of John Young and his corned beef sandwich, painted on a traffic box at Loch Haven Park by artist Briana Vega. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s spaceflights began with Gemini 3 in March 1965, joining Gus Grissom \u2014 the second American to ever visit space \u2014 in becoming the first American astronauts to get out there as a pair. <\/p>\n

The purpose of the Gemini missions was to put astronauts in orbit for periods longer than during the Mercury flights and to test them in microgravity, all in preparation for Project Apollo, but it was Young\u2019s antics during Gemini 3 that added to our reasons to remember him.<\/p>\n

As it\u2019s recounted in a 2018 piece for the National Air and Space Museum<\/a>, Young told Life Magazine that with Grissom bored of NASA\u2019s space food \u2014 menu items that Young said came in plastic bags and required a water gun to \u201csquirt liquid inside to reconstitute them\u201d \u2014 bringing a corned-beef sandwich with them \u201cseemed like a fun idea at the time.\u201d <\/p>\n

According to Young, his contraband corned-beef sandwich was thanks to astronaut Wally Schirra, who had it prepared at a restaurant in Cocoa Beach before Gemini 3 launched. Schirra was well known as a practical joker. <\/p>\n

(…)<\/p>\n

In the transcripts of the Gemini 3 mission, Young tells Grissom, \u201cLet\u2019s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d When Grissom took a bite, \u201ccrumbs of rye bread started floating all around the cabin,\u201d he told Life. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Grissom put the sandwich in his pocket for the duration of the flight, Young remarking \u201cIt was a thought anyway\u2026 Not a very good one.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible for tiny crumbs like that to pose a big threat during spaceflight\u2014they can fly off and get wedged in any of the many pieces of equipment that keep a spacecraft running. (That\u2019s why they use tortillas instead of bread aboard the International Space Station.)<\/p>\n

Hillary Brady: “How an Astronaut Smuggled a Sandwich Into Space” (Nov. 2, 2018)<\/p>\n

It should be noted here that Deke Slayton \u2014 who was NASA\u2019s director of Flight Crew Operations at the time \u2014 wrote in his autobiography that he had actually given Young permission to stow the sandwich and only formally reprimanded him to satisfy agency complaints in post.<\/p>\n

Less than two years after that happy memory, Grissom, along with NASA astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee, died when a fire swept through their command module during an Apollo launch rehearsal test on Jan. 27, 1967. It was retroactively named \u201cApollo 1\u2033 in their honor.<\/p>\n

The tragedy, the first deaths that NASA said were directly related to the U.S. space program, further led to a lengthy redesign of the spacecraft. The space agency didn\u2019t resume human flights until October of the following year.<\/p>\n

[MORE: Apollo Project overcomes tragedy to land man on moon<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s portrait with his and Grissom\u2019s sandwich overlooks Loch Haven Park and gives his likeness a good view of the Orlando Science Center, which we\u2019re told was named after Young several different times before moving to its current building in 1997.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1973, the institution went through a series of name changes honoring famous Orlando native son, astronaut Captain John Young,\u201d Jeff Stanford, vice president of Marketing at Orlando Science Center, said in a statement to News 6. \u201cThese included \u2018The John Young Museum and Planetarium,\u2019 changed to \u2018The John Young Science Center\u2019 and subsequently to \u2018John Young Science Center.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

“John Young Museum and Planetarium at 777 E. Princeton St. in Orlando, Florida.” (Florida Memory (public domain))<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll recognize the science center\u2019s old building as what\u2019s now the John & Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center, where I got as far as playing King Lear in their summer camps years ago. <\/p>\n

The John & Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center, formally the John Young Museum and Planetarium. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

\u201cOSC has a rich history of adapting to the changing needs of our community and serving as an invaluable resource for cultural experiences and engaging learning opportunities,\u201d Stanford continued. \u201cIn 1955, a group of visionaries chartered a small nonprofit called the Central Florida Museum to stimulate active learning for visitors, interpret Florida\u2019s natural environment, and adapt to changing times. The first wing of the museum built was the planetarium, which opened in 1960 and was one of the first constructed in Florida. In response to booming population growth and an increasing need for STEM education in area schools, the Board voted to become a \u2019hands-on\u2019 science center, which led to technology upgrades and an expansion of the planetarium. Astronaut and Orlando native Captain John Young attended the grand opening of the new planetarium in 1971.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Young and his family had moved to Orlando during the latter half of the 1930s. You can find a historical marker outside of an old home of his on Princeton Street, less than a mile and a half west of the sandwich portrait.<\/p>\n

John Young’s childhood home in College Park. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

He may have had to move away for college after graduating from Orlando High School in 1948, but he was remembered here ever since.<\/p>\n

Sheryn Minton, my grandmother, taught at Edgewater High School for 35 years. Her mother also taught, doing so at elementary schools in and around College Park. <\/p>\n

Like any good teachers, they both found themselves able to brag about some of their former students. Maybe some of you reading this were my grandmother\u2019s students way back when, but it was her mother who she says would talk about teaching John Young and Joe Kittinger at Princeton Elementary School, recalling them as rambunctious boys who understandably grew up to be daring pilots.<\/p>\n

Framed pages of The Orlando Sentinel Star. (Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

Young died about eight years ago last month, at 87 years old<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it was, that on Jan. 5, 2018, in Houston, life ended for the only person who ever knew what it was like to grow up in College Park and to walk on the moon.<\/p>\n

To my knowledge, it was also he and Grissom alone who knew the thrill of sneaking a sandwich into low-Earth orbit. That is, unless any of the Artemis II astronauts have anything to say, or smuggle, about that.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE PARK, Fla. \u2013 I don\u2019t think enough people care that we\u2019re going back to the moon. Before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[48493,7075,2457,72494,11969,1335,139,141,140,1769,1770],"class_list":{"0":"post-165212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-artemis-ii","9":"tag-college-park","10":"tag-history","11":"tag-john-young","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-space-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}