Frank Borman

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Frank Borman bigraphy, stories - Astronauts

Frank Borman : biography

March 14, 1928 –

Frank Frederick Borman, II (born March 14, 1928) is a retired NASA astronaut, best remembered as the Commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, making him, along with crew mates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, the first of only 24 humans to do so. Before flying on Apollo, he set a fourteen-day spaceflight endurance record on Gemini 7, and also served on the NASA review board which investigated the Apollo 1 fire. After leaving NASA, he was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Eastern Air Lines from 1975 to 1986. Borman is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. In the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Borman was played by David Andrews.

Eastern Air Lines

In early 1969, Borman became a special advisor to Eastern Airlines and after retiring from NASA and the U.S. Air Force in 1970, he was made Senior Vice President-Operations Group at the airline company. He was later promoted to Executive Vice President-General Operations Manager and was elected to Eastern Airlines’s Board of Directors in July 1974. In May 1975, Borman was elected President and Chief Operating Officer. He was named Chief Executive Officer of Eastern Airlines in December 1975 and became Chairman of the Board in December 1976.http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/borman-f.html

After Borman became Eastern Airlines’s CEO, it went through the four most profitable years in the company’s history. However, in 1983, contentious battles with labor unions, particularly the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) led the company to abandon several profitable programs and the resulting losses led to the sale of the airline to Texas Air Corporation, headed by Frank Lorenzo. Borman retired from Eastern Airlines in June 1986.http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/borman-f.html An IAM strike and intransigence by the IAM Union forced Eastern into bankruptcy in 1989, followed by liquidation in 1991.

Tributes

  • I-80/I-94 in Lake County, Indiana, which runs through his birthtown of Gary, Indiana, is named the Frank Borman Expressway.
  • A Department of Defense Education Activity elementary school on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona is named in Borman’s honor.

Early career

Borman was born in Gary, Indiana, where the Frank Borman Expressway is named after him. Because he suffered from numerous sinus problems in the cold and damp weather, his father packed up the family and moved to the better climate of Tucson, Arizona, which Borman considers his home town. He started to fly at the age of 15. He is a graduate of the Tucson High School. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1950 where he served as an Army Football Manager, and along with part of his graduating class, he entered the United States Air Force (USAF) and became a fighter pilot. He received his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1957. Later, Borman was selected for the Aerospace Research Pilot School and became a test pilot.

Quotes

"There’s no question that it was a coffin, and I’d have flown it gladly." — Public comment on the hazardous design and construction of the Apollo Command Module, while serving on the AS-204 Accident Review Board.

"Had that rocket not fired, I’d still be orbiting the moon. Forever. And I really didn’t want to do that." — Spoken of the Apollo 8 mission during the documentary When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

"I’ve long said that capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell. But it’s hard to see any good news in this." — as chairman of Eastern Airlines

Awards

  • Distinguished Flying Cross
  • NASA Distinguished Service Medal
  • NASA Exceptional Service Medal
  • Society of Experimental Test Pilots James H. Doolittle Award, 1976
  • Congressional Space Medal of Honor, 1978
  • Tony Jannus Award, 1986