Captain James A. Lovell, Jr., a former member of Breakthrough T1D’s International Board of Directors (1999 through 2002) and an internationally known American astronaut, passed away Thursday, August 7. He was 97 years old, according to his obituary in the New York Times.
A tireless T1D champion, Captain Lovell is known around the world as the astronaut who led the famed Apollo 13 spacecraft on its journey to the moon in 1970. The return to earth was perilous, as marked by the renowned words “Houston, we have a problem.”
Captain Lovell was among an impressive list of public figures and celebrities invited to testify at the Children’s Congress in 2001, sharing that when his then-26-year-old son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, he called his father at NASA to utter those same words to break the news of his diagnosis.
“At the time, I thought it ironic that he would draw a parallel between my career at NASA, especially the Apollo 13 mission, and his diagnoses with diabetes,” he said during his 2001 Children’s Congress testimony. ”My training at NASA gave me the confidence in my ability to overcome any obstacles that stood before my goals… But when my son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes [sic], the skills that I had developed at NASA suddenly seemed meaningless. I felt that I had nothing to fight this disease that was threatening my son’s life. I was well aware that insulin was not a cure for diabetes, and that even if my son did everything in his power to maintain tight control of his blood glucose levels, he could still be faced with the devastating complications of this disease. However, after joining the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation [sic], I became convinced that we do have the ability to find a cure for diabetes, and that the skills that were developed at NASA, such as teamwork and ingenuity and commitment, will help us achieve this goal…”
Breakthrough T1D is grateful for Captain Lovell’s leadership within our organization as well as our nation’s history as a leader in space exploration.
Read Captain Lovell’s full 2001 Children’s Congress testimony.