SHEPARD: “Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here.”

STEVE EMBER: When Shepard did hit the golf balls, they traveled "for miles and miles," as he reported, because the gravity on the moon is one-sixth of the gravity on Earth.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The only humans to walk on the moon were in the Apollo space flight program. Twelve American astronauts walked on the moon between nineteen sixty-nine and nineteen seventy-two. Alan Shepard was the fifth one.

In nineteen seventy-four, he retired from NASA and the Navy. Shepard became chairman of a building company in Houston, Texas. Later he began his own company, called Seven Fourteen Enterprises. It was named for his flights on Freedom Seven and Apollo Fourteen.

He also wrote a book with astronaut Deke Slayton about his experiences. The book is called "Moon Shot." And he led a group raising college money for science and engineering students.

STEVE EMBER: Alan Shepard died on July twenty-first, nineteen ninety-eight after a two-year fight with the blood disease leukemia. He was seventy-four years old. He had been married to his wife, Louise, for fifty-three years.