A couple of decades ago I acquired a wetsuit top from a junk dealer’s pile that happened to be from he Apollo 17 UDT Recovery Team. Knowing the historical significance of this gear, it has not only been one of my most coveted collectibles and a great conversation piece among my adult friends, but it also served as an amazing educational tool. While my boys were in grade school it made yearly visits to “show and tell” where young imaginations weren’t just sparked, but actually ignited when they were allowed to touch a piece of living history and see the pictures of the UDT at work on the recovery. It has continued in that role as I took on science tutoring in my spare time.

Lo and behold, with the magic of the internet, two weeks ago my wife actually located the contact information for the frogman, whom I contacted, curious as to how this rare piece of gear made its way from splashdown to me. Needless to say he was amazed to receive my email with pictures of a suit he hadn’t seen in 40 some years. I called and we spoke for some time about the recovery, the space program and what he’s been doing since. Turns out the suit was sold to a fellow shipmate on the USS Ticonderoga, and he’d lost track of it from there. When he heard what I’d been doing with it, his reply was “Gosh!I didn’t know I was famous!”

By the time I’d hung up the phone, the film was already spinning through my head. Something was missing, though, to round the whole story off… it needed an ending… the more I thought about it the more the ending wrote itself…

Our frogman, as with most SEALs, shies from publicity. They do as we bid them without hesitation, without question, without recognition. Theirs is a silent service, only rarely, as in the Somali pirates incident, are we aware of their presence, much less their effectiveness. Although often faced, during the course of their duty, with combat scenarios, the space program demonstrates the selflessness with which they perform their service.

Remember, in ’72 we were in the midst of Vietnam, yet these dedicated men took the time to perform a mission of peace. NASA has depended on the UDT/SEAL service since the inception of manned space flight, when NASA chose splashdown as the preferred method of landing spacecraft back on earth again. These are the guys who showed NASA how to do it.

So I start thinking, I’m an indie filmmaker, wouldn’t it be cool to make a film and use the film to promote raising funds for a reunion of the surviving members of the Recovery Team, the surviving two Apollo 17 astronauts, Capt. Cernan and Sen. Schmitt, and say thanks by presenting the suit, framed, to the frogman who wrote history with it.

Wouldn’t that be cool?