Gus Grissom - Memorials

Memorials

If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

—Grissom, after the Gemini 3 mission, March 1965

  • The dismantled Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station bears two memorial plaques: One reads, They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived. and the other, In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach for the stars. Ad astra per aspera, (a rough road leads to the stars). God speed to the crew of Apollo 1.
  • Grissom is named with his fellow Apollo 1 crewmates on the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
  • Navi (Ivan backwards), a star also named Gamma Cassiopeiae: Grissom and one of his flight crews had used the star to calibrate their equipment, wrote the name in logs as a joke and it eventually stuck.
  • Grissom Hill is 7.5 km (4.7 mi) southwest of Columbia Memorial Station on Mars and is one of the Apollo 1 Hills.
  • A landmark on the moon is called Marina Grissom.
  • The airport in Bedford, Indiana where Grissom flew as a teenager was renamed Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport.
  • Grissom's boyhood home on Grissom Avenue (renamed in his honor after his Mercury flight) in Mitchell, Indiana, is currently being restored into a museum.
  • A limestone carving of the Titan II rocket which launched his Gemini flight is in downtown Mitchell, Indiana. There is also a memorial in nearby Spring Mill State Park.
  • The auditorium in Mitchell High School, which Grissom attended.
  • Virgil I. Grissom Library, Denbigh section of Newport News, Virginia.
  • Virgil I. Grissom Bridge across the Hampton River, on Rt 258 (Mercury Blvd, named after the Mercury program) in Hampton, VA, is one of the six bridges and one road named after the original 7 Mercury astronauts, who trained in the area.
  • Virgil "Gus" Grissom Park, Fullerton, California. (Fullerton also has parks named for White and Chaffee).
  • The Gus Grissom Stakes, thoroughbred horse race run each fall at Hoosier Park in Anderson, Indiana.
  • Grissom Island, artificial island, Long Beach Harbor off Southern California.

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