page_title: Jim Lovell
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Lovell / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: GREAT LAKES, Ill. (Aug. 24, 2009) Retired Navy captain and former astronaut Jim Lovell and his wife, Marilyn Gerlach, sign the final roofing beam to be lifted into place during the topping off ceremony for the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center. The building will be the first completely integrated Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs health care center. Located near Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill., the center is scheduled for completion in August 2010. (U.S. Navy photo by Bill Couch/Released)
context_page_description: James Arthur Lovell Jr. is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became one of the first three humans to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission which, after a critical failure en route, circled around the Moon and returned safely to Earth through the efforts of the crew and mission control.
  Lovell had previously flown on two Gemini missions, Gemini 7 in 1965 and Gemini 12 in 1966. He was the first person to fly into space four times.
  One of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, Lovell was the first person to fly to it twice. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and co-author of the 1994 book Lost Moon, on which the 1995 film Apollo 13 was based.
context_section_description: Born in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio, James Lovell was the only child of his mother Blanche (Masek), who was of Czech descent, and his father, James, Sr., an Ontario, Canada-born coal furnace salesman, who died in a car accident in 1933. For about two years, Lovell and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana. After relocating with his mother to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he graduated from Juneau High School. A member of the Boy Scouts during his childhood, Lovell eventually achieved Eagle Scout, the organization's highest level.
  Lovell became interested in rocketry and built flying models as a boy. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years under the "Flying Midshipman" program from 1946 to 1948.  While at Madison, he played football and pledged to the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.
  While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, the navy was beginning to make cutbacks in the program, and cadets were under a great deal of pressure to transfer out. There were concerns that some or most of the students who graduated as Naval Aviators would not have pilot billets to fill. This threat persisted until the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.  Lovell applied and was accepted to the United States Naval Academy in the fall of 1948. During his first year he wrote a treatise on the liquid-propellant rocket engine. He attended Annapolis for the full four years, graduating as an ensign in the spring of 1952 with a B.S. degree. He then went to flight training at NAS Pensacola from October 1952 to February 1954.
caption: Lovell and his wife Marilyn in 2009
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