The original Apollo 13 crew: Ken Mattingly at center, flanked by Jim Lovell (L) and Fred Haise.

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He was depressed.  Who wouldn’t be?  After training for years to fly to the moon, just three days before launch, to lose his seat, the center seat, the Command Pilot’s slot, on Apollo 13 in 1970?  Just because he’d be exposed to the German measles.  And damn it, he didn’t have the measles.

He was depressed, but he didn’t step back, he stepped forward.  When Apollo 13 radioed “We have a problem” and its command ship slipped near death, he worked the procedures to bring it back to life and bring the crew — his crew, you know — home alive.  And damn it, he wished wished he was aboard, even if they hadn’t made it back.

He didn’t step back, he stepped forward.  Settling into the center seat for Apollo 16, two extra years of training before he flew.  And once again nearly flew into failure.  This time in lunar orbit, just minutes before the scheduled landing.  As he pulled the command ship away from the lander flown by John Young and Charlie Duke, he checked his main engine, the Service Propulsion System, before burning to a circular orbit.  On the backup steering system, the engine shuttered like crazy.  Damn it — had he did something wrong?  He ran through the checklist again.  And again.  No, he’d done everything right.  Could a circuit have failed?

One step back and leap forward:  Mission Control checked the data as hours and orbits passed.  And finally determined that the engine would work fine even with that shutter.  He made the burn perfectly.  And Young and Duke landed in the highlands of the moon they explored for three days . . .

. . . And in those days,  the Apollo program was nearing its end, no seats for the taking for years.  But he didn’t step back, he stepped forward.  Ten years later he was in orbit again, commanding the fourth and final Shuttle test flight, STS-4, aboard Columbia.   

Was he ready to step back?  Not yet.  He went on to command the 15th Shuttle flight, the first classified military mission, aboard Discovery in January 1985, nearly 15 years after those days of depression.

He was T. K. “Ken” Mattingly, and at the age of 87, he died on October 31 — taking that final step we all will make someday.