Donn F. Eisele

Donn F. Eisele occupied the command module pilot seat for the eleven-day flight of Apollo VII in 1968—the first manned flight test of the third generation United States spacecraft. Eisele graduated from Columbus City’s West High School in 1948 and became the first and only astronaut from Columbus. Along with astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and Walter Cunningham, Eisele participated in maneuvers in transposition and docking and lunar orbit rendezvous with the S-IVB stage of their Saturn IB launch vehicle. The crew also completed eight successful test and maneuvering ignitions of the service module propulsion engine, measured the accuracy of performance of all spacecraft systems and provided the first effective television transmissions of onboard crew activities. Apollo VII’s 260-hour, four-and-a-half-million-mile flight concluded on October 22, 1968, with splashdown in the Atlantic, only three-tenths of a mile from the originally predicted aiming point. Eisele also later served as backup command module pilot for the Apollo X flight. Overall, he logged more than 4,200 hours flying time—3,600 hours in jet aircraft. An Eagle Scout, Eisele competed in Track and Cross Country during high school. Upon graduation, Eisele received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He later joined the Air Force and attended the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He went on to receive a Master of Science degree in Astronautics from the US Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Then, he was assigned as a project engineer and experimental test pilot at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. During his career, Colonel Eisele was awarded the NASA exceptional Service Metal, Air Force Senior Pilot Astronaut Wings and the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross. A family-approved account of Eisele's life appears in the 2007 book In the Shadow of the Moon. He resigned from the Astronaut Office in 1970 and became technical assistant for manned spaceflight at the NASA Langley Research Center, a position he occupied until retiring from both NASA and the Air Force in 1972. In July 1972, Eisele became Country Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Thailand. Returning from Thailand two years later, he became Sales Manager for Marion Power Shovel, a division of Dresser Industries. Eisele then handled private and corporate accounts for the investment firm of Oppenheimer & Company. He also participated in the 1986 Concorde Comet Chase flights out of Miami and New York. Born in Columbus, Ohio, on June 23, 1930, Eisele died on December 2, 1987 of a heart attack while on a business trip to Tokyo, Japan. He is survived by his wife Susan and their two children, along with four children from a previous marriage.