Forget my Uncle Al?
Well, OK, that's an exaggeration, the spelling's different, his is "Shepard", but the similarity guaranteed that I bugged my parents to get up at 5AM Pacific to get me up to watch the launch. I was, let's see, just a month shy of seven. But I understood that a guy named Al with a last name that sounded like mine was sitting on top of that rocket when it blasted off into space, and I never forgot Alan B. Shepard. Ya gotta love that -eating grin...