Alan Bean - Wheeler, TX - Space Flight Memorials and Exhibits on Waymarking.com

In 1932 Arnold H. Bean was in Wheeler, Texas to collect soil samples and map the soil variances of Wheeler County for the United States Department of Agriculture. While living in Wheeler his wife, Frances, gave birth to their first child. Alan LaVern Bean, on March 15, 1932. Alan made the news in Wheeler, even then, as he was born with two front teeth. Thirty-seven years later NASA Astronaut Captain Alan L. Bean made the news again in Wheeler as he became the fourth man to walk on the moon. On November 19, 1969, Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan landed on the Ocean of Storms while their Apollo XII crewmate Richard "Dick" Gordon, in the Command Module, orbited 60 miles above photographing sites for future landings. With tools similar to those used by Alan's father in Wheeler County, Astronauts Conrad and Bean gathered lunar soil samples and emplaced experiments some two hundred and forty thousand miles from Planet Earth.

This sculpture, "Tiptoeing on the Ocean of Storms", conveys the feeling of running in one-sixth gravity. Bean explains, "The suit is still and hard to move at the knee and hip joints and you learn very quickly to move about by keeping the legs relatively stiff and using ankle motion as if you are dancing on tiptoe. Because of the one-sixth Earth's gravity on the moon, it felt as if my legs would never tire." In 1981 Alan Bean resigned from NASA to devote time and energy to a new genre of fine art, paintings that celebrate what humans do and fell as we begin our exploration of the vast universe surrounding our tiny planet. "I want you to see the spirit of Apollo that is inside us all. I hope my paintings are treasures that remind all of us who we are, what roads we have traveled and where we are going."

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