when we were boys we had heroes. But they weren't athletes or entertainers.
Athletes were certainly heroes to many in America, entertainers too, but they didn't have what we wanted.
They weren't astronauts.
And we would be astronauts, like John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, like Ed White, who walked freely in space and later burned alive along with Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo mission disaster of 1967.
There were two sets of brothers, six of us altogether, ranging in age from 10 to 6, the three Knaff boys and the three Kass boys.
And we'd sit in backyards on summer nights, with Popsicles in our hands, looking at the moon and stars, talking about the important subjects: About limbo, where we were told unbaptized babies were sent if they died; and how all of us wanted a dog, and of course we talked of dinosaurs.
