EAA Museum Director Chris Henry talks passing of astronaut Jim Lovell, EAA AirVenture 2025, and more on “The Todd Allbaugh Show”

WISCONSIN (CIVIC MEDIA) – Host Todd Allbaugh was joined by Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Museum Director Chris Henry on Civic Media’s “The Todd Allbaugh Show” to discuss the life and legacy of former NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, who passed away at 97. Henry also discusses EAA’s record-setting AirVenture event, and more.

Todd begins the interview by asking Henry to give his thoughts on the EAA event, which had record attendance this year.

“Oh, it went amazing. We ended up with over 700,000 people. Over 10,000 airplanes,” Henry began. “The weather was, you know, really great. We had a, I think we had one day where we got a little bit of rain. I mean, it was a little bit of rainy afternoon. A couple of days were of some heat, but nothing too crazy. My favorite thing was the, it was a hot day for us, but I had somebody from Texas with us who thought that it was cool. And, ‘oh, this is nothing,’ you know, but really just a great event.

And it really is, like a family reunion. You see people that are your friends that you only see this time of year. And you, you seek each other out during that week… Just that few minutes of camaraderie kind of recharges your airplane battery here, if you will. Itt gets you all fired up again to go back to work and continue going and doing everything we can to preserve aviation history and give more people interested in it. But over 700,000 people – that was a big number. We were really, really excited about that.”

The conversation then turns to the late Jim Lovell, a former NASA astronaut who famously commanded the Apollo 13 space flight. Henry speaks on Lovell’s Wisconsin roots and recounts how a chance occurrence between EAA’s founder and Lovell saved the astronaut from disaster.

“He spent a lot of his time growing up in Wisconsin. As a matter of fact, there’s a really good EAA story to this too, which always cracked me up,” Henry said. “So, Jim Lovell went on to become a naval aviator. He flew fighters. Aircrafts like the Banshee. And these airplanes had something called a T-tail. So the tail, the horizontal stabilizer on the aircraft, is kind of up high. So you can’t really see it. And it was a winter in Wisconsin, like we get here. And he had made sure all the ice was clear off his aircraft. He was getting ready to go flying. But he couldn’t see the T-tail, and he forgot about it.

And, as he was getting ready to, you know, do the pre-flight on the airplane, a tanker of a refueling aircraft taxied by. The guy got out and he said, ‘hey, you couldn’t see it, but there’s a lot of ice on the top of that tail.’ And Jim Lovell later said, ‘you know, that saved my life, because if I had tried to fly the airplane like that, I wouldn’t have been able to climb. And it was years later that he discovered it was Paul Poberezny, our founder, that was the tanker pilot that taxied by. And, he saw it and stopped him from going. So, there was a really good EAA tie to it – he was also a very proud Wisconsinite here as well.”

Henry went on to speak about Lovell’s character, describing him as a “humble hero.”

“I think the thing that shocked me the most,” Henry recalled, ” I was really built up for, you know, you don’t know, you’ve never met somebody like this, you’re like, ‘oh boy, are they like a movie star? Do they have a bunch of demands? Do they only want green M&Ms, and stuff like that? You couldn’t be more off with Jim Lovell. He was purely, just the most humble hero, and the nicest guy and just a jovial guy.

I mean, he was just, a very, very friendly person. And when you put him and (astronaut) Frank Borman together, they could have had their own comedy show. If anybody listening, came to Theatre in the Woods, you guys know what I mean. They were hilarious. I mean, I guess spending two weeks on (1968 spaceflight) Gemini 7 probably sealed the deal for their friendship. I mean, they were best friends, but they were absolutely hilarious together. So, very nice guy, very giving of his time. I mean, he gave so much to EAA, both in just his time and coming up for events. And I just, you couldn’t be more wrong if you thought that there was going to be an ego.”

Todd mentions that Frank Borman, the commander of 1968’s Apollo 8 space flight and recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, is commemorated with an exhibit at the EAA Aviation Museum. Henry spoke on Borman’s significance to aviation and space travel.

“So Frank Borman, he was one of the new nine, the same group of astronauts that Lovell got selected in,” Henry explained. “Everybody knows the original seven. This was the second group. And they flew Gemini 7 together – two weeks in space. And remember, we’re not talking about two weeks in the shuttle. This is two weeks strapped to your seat of something to size what they described as a Volkswagen Bug… and that really gave us a sense of how long we could stay up in space. I mean, that was, that was a record-breaking flight.

And then Frank testified before Congress after the Apollo 1 fire, where we lost three astronauts, (Gus) Grissom, (Roger) Chaffeem, and (Ed) White… And then, (Borman) commanded Apollo 8, which was the first time we’re going to leave low-earth orbit, first time we’re going to park in lunar orbit…a lot of people feel (Apollo 8) is the most important scientific mission ever flown. That is a lot of firsts that we had to undertake, and the way the Apollo program was structured, every numbered mission had to be a success before the next mission could go. So, without Apollo 8, there was no Apollo 9, without 9, there wouldn’t be a 10, and you had to hit these goals before we could go and do the moon landing, I think.”

To wrap up, Henry spoke about what Lovell’s legacy means to him.

“To me personally, I think one of the things that will always stand out is that despite being, as historically significant and as famous as he was, he was always just so wonderful to everybody here. We really did view him and his family as family… Just an absolutely humble hero.”

Editor’s note: Listen in to “The Todd Allbaugh Show” weekdays from 2-4 p.m. on the Civic Media radio network.