(Editor’s note: I had the pleasure in mid-March of attending the grand opening of the Gus Grissom Center at Bonne Terre, Missouri, an hour or so south of St. Louis. Here’s my report for EE Times.)
Earl Mullins gives new meaning to his home state of Missouri’s motto: Show Me.
A few years back the space enthusiast approached Lowell Grissom, the astronaut Gus Grissom’s younger brother, declaring he was going to establish a space museum in middle-of-nowhere Missouri. He wanted Lowell to dedicate it.
Lowell was unimpressed. “Good luck with that!” he thought, putting the encounter out of his mind.
A few years later, Lowell received a call from Earl Mullins. The museum was ready to be dedicated. Like the astronauts he reveres, Earl did precisely what he said he would do. Lowell Grissom was impressed, and helped open the doors to the Space Museum in the old mining town of Bonne Terre, Missouri.
A few weeks back, Mullins opened an expanded museum in a renovated building on Bonne Terre’s main drag. Lowell Grissom was there again along with the legendary astronaut’s son, Scott, to dedicate the Gus Grissom Center.
What Mullins has created is a resting place for five decades of space exploration artifacts collecting dust in NASA’s attic and—in one case—at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Mullins and a group of former McDonnell Aircraft engineers, their children and friends volunteered over the last several years to create a first-class museum that perfectly captures the essence of the American space program and what it all means.
What the Grissom Center illustrates is an indomitable pioneering spirit, the need to explore our solar system while accepting risks and overcoming barriers.
Mullins is emphatic on one point: He could have located his space museum and the Grissom Center up the road in St. Louis. There he would have benefitted from more foot traffic and even made a few bucks on a sure-fire money loser. But Earl has not forgotten his roots, wants desperately to help his community by creating an attraction folks around the country will come to see.
Every town needs a citizen like Earl Mullins of Bonne Terre, Missouri.
Click here to see what the museum founder and curator has created.
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