Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. (June 2, 1930 – July 8, 1999) was an American NASA astronaut, aeronautical engineer, naval officer, aviator, and test pilot who commanded the Apollo 12 mission, on which he became the third person to walk on the Moon. Conrad was selected for NASA's second astronaut class in 1962. Conrad was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Despite having dyslexia, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University—which later made him the first Ivy League astronaut—and joined the U.S. Navy. In 1954, Conrad received his naval aviator wings, served as a fighter pilot and, after graduating from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (Class 20), as a project test pilot. In 1959, he was an astronaut candidate for Project Mercury. Conrad set an eight-day space endurance record in 1965 along with his Command Pilot Gordon Cooper on his first spaceflight, Gemini 5. Later, Conrad commanded Gemini 11 in 1966, and Apollo 12 in 1969. After Apollo, he commanded Skylab 2, the first crewed Skylab mission, in 1973. On the mission, he and his crewmates repaired significant launch damage to the Skylab space station. For this, President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978. After Conrad retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973, he became a vice president of American Television and Communications Company. He went on to work for McDonnell Douglas, where he served as vice president of marketing, senior vice president of marketing, staff vice president of international business development, and vice president of project development. Conrad died in 1999 from internal injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, aged 69.
Early life and education Charles Conrad Jr. was born on June 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, the third child and the first son of Charles Conrad Sr. and Frances De Rappelage Conrad (née Vinson), into a well-to-do real estate and banking family. The Great Depression wiped out the Conrad family's fortune, just as it had those of so many others. In 1942, the family lost their manor home in Philadelphia, and then moved into a small carriage house, paid for by Frances's brother, Egerton Vinson. Eventually, Charles Sr., broken down by financial failures, left his family. Conrad was considered a bright, intelligent boy, but he continually struggled with his schoolwork. He had dyslexia, a condition little understood at the time. Conrad attended the Haverford School, a private academy in Haverford, Pennsylvania, that previous generations of Conrads had attended. Even after his family's financial downturn, his uncle Egerton supported his continued schooling at Haverford. However, Pete's dyslexia continued to frustrate his academic efforts. After he failed most of his 11th grade exams, Haverford expelled him from school.
Conrad's mother refused to believe that her son was unintelligent, and she set about finding him a suitable school. She found Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. There, Conrad learned how to apply a systems approach to learning, and thus found a way to work around his dyslexia. Despite having to repeat the 11th grade, Conrad so excelled at Darrow that after his graduation in 1949, he not only was admitted to Princeton University, but he was also awarded a full Navy ROTC scholarship. While at Darrow, although he was only 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) and weighed 135 pounds (61 kg), Conrad started as the center on his football team and became the team captain. "He was a very tough boy, and we won our share of games," said the school's assistant headmaster. Starting when he was 15 years old, Conrad worked during the summertime at the Paoli Airfield near Paoli, Pennsylvania, bartering lawn mowing, sweeping, and other odd jobs for airplane flights and occasional instructional time. He learned more about the mechanics and workings of aircraft and aircraft engines, and then he graduated to minor maintenance work. When he was 16, he drove almost 100 miles (160 km) to help a flight instructor whose airplane had been forced to make an emergency landing. Conrad repaired the plane single-handedly. Thereafter, the instructor gave Conrad the flight lessons that he needed to earn his pilot's certificate even before he graduated from high school. Conrad continued flying while he was in college, not only keeping his pilot's certificate, but also earning an instrument flight rating. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton in 1953, after completing a 200-page-long senior thesis titled "The Design of a Turbo-Jet Military Advanced Trainer" with Richard V. Warden, Richard W. Vannata, and Calvin H. Perrine. He was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy as a Naval ROTC graduate.
Aviation career in the U.S. Navy
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