What a great life we had," Barbara said.Copyright 2019 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved. It was their job,” said Amy Bean, 56, and a resident of Boerne.Gene Cernan and Alan Bean were both naval aviators who were chosen for NASA’s third astronaut class in 1963. "Did you ladies ever pinch yourself back then? "They flew the closest to the moon without actually landing on it.

"Barbara talked to KPRC 2 after Gene's successful voyage into space. Her then-husband, Gene Cernan, was the pilot.From left, astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, and Charles Duke during a live TV interview in 2009, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.The Apollo 12 crew, from left, Charles "Pete" Conrad, Richard Gordon and Alan Bean, in an undated file photo.Artist Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, is shown during a preview of his work at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in 2008 in Austin. "You were so proud as an American that we had actually accomplished what we set out to do," Barbara said.The United States was racing to be the first to the moon. “I’ve thought that all my life, and my father reinforced it, ‘If you work hard enough, there is nothing you cannot do.’ Now that shapes you.”Diane Cowen has worked at the Houston Chronicle since 2000 and currently its architecture and home design writer. Alan Bean’s wife, Sue, now 84 and a Houston resident, remembers driving to Kemah for groceries because there wasn’t a grocery store there, and it would be some time before anyone opened a restaurant there.But in the middle of the Cold War, the space race was heating up. Cernan, who was married to wife Jan Nanna Cernan with whom he had three daughters, later founded his own firm, The Cernan Corporation in 1981, which dealt with … Seated, from left, Claire Schweikart, unknown, Pat Collins, Sue Bean, Martha Chaffee (seated) and Lurton Scott (seated). That's what you did and that was a role you had to follow. If ever there was a pensioner who might regret not being part of the selfie generation, it would be Eugene Cernan. “It was not that the guys didn’t want to be home. The Beans divorced in 1976, the Cernans in 1981. Tribune and at the Shelbyville (Ind.) "Astronaut families: Wives, children of Apollo astronauts look back on ‘amazing’ time They’d visit Cape Canaveral in Florida or learn survival skills somewhere in the desert or in the jungles of South or Central America.The Beans and Cernans have remained close friends since they met in the early 1960s and still reminisce on those times and how the wives worked to keep things together at home.“The wives were close because the guys were gone so much and so often,” said Sue Bean. He was the fourth man to walk on the moon.Sue Bean, left, and daughter Amy Bean, watch the Apollo 10 launch.Amy Bean, left, with Tracy Cernan.The girls were the daughters of astronauts Alan Bean and Gene Cernan and were Nassau Bay neighbors, classmates and friends while growing up.Members of the Apollo 12 lunar landing mission's crew are greeted by their wives and children on Nov. 29, 1969 at the front of a large crowd on hand to welcome the three home. He earned the recognition of being the last man to walk on the moon.Sue's husband, Alan Bean, took flight on Apollo 12 and later went up on SkyLab. “I remember Dad saying that when we got to NASA they said we’d go to the moon but we had no idea how to get there. But the one about the moondust inspired music, “Tracy’s Song” by No More Kings, and earned a still-talked-about mention in a 2012 episode of the ABC sit-com, “Modern Family.”She was having dinner with her parents and her phone blew up.