Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell dies at 97

James A. Lovell, the famous astronaut who lived a life of firsts, died Thursday in Wake Forest, Ill., according to NASA. He was 97 years old. Lovell participated in the first successful space rendezvous in the Gemini 7 spacecraft.

Lovell was known as Smilin’ Jim by his fellow astronauts because of his quick wit and grin, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said. He had an explorer’s bold resolve and optimism.

On December 21, 1968, with Frank Borman and William Anders, Lovell rode the mighty Saturn V rocket into orbit for the first time. That same Apollo 8 mission was the first to leave Earth’s gravitational field, fly to the moon, and orbit it. And Lovell was the first, with Borman and Anders, to read the Bible from space during their broadcast of Christmas greetings to “everyone on the good Earth” with a reading of the creation story from Genesis 1. Lovell dreamed of riding a rocket since high school and joined NASA as part of the “second nine” group of astronauts in 1962.

Though he was one of America’s greatest astronauts, he will be most remembered for the mission he never completed, called the “successful failure,” Apollo 13. On April 13, 1970, an explosion disabled the lunar-bound craft and threatened to kill the crew. The story of how Lovell, his fellow astronauts John Swigert and Fred Haise, and NASA engineers overcame the odds and brought the damaged ship home was portrayed in the award winning 1995 Ron Howard film, Apollo 13. That Lovell, who was also the first man to travel to the moon twice, felt the missed opportunity of actually landing on the lunar surface is seen in the title of his memoir, Lost Moon, upon which Howard’s movie was based.

Lovell married his high school sweetheart, Marilyn Gerlach, the day he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1952. The couple had four children. A line from the film, spoken by his mother in the midst of the crisis, sums up his life, “You put wings on a washing machine, and my Jimmy can fly it.”