Fireman turned policeman dies at 29

Adam Jobbers-Miller grew up in Wayne, New Jersey, the son of a fireman. He served as a volunteer fireman with his father before he was hired as a police officer in Fort Myers, Florida.

Jobbers-Miller was shot in the head on July 21 while responding to a report of a gunman at a gas station. He underwent surgery but died of his injuries a week later.

It takes tremendous courage to risk one’s life as a firefighter or a police officer. Jobbers-Miller did both.

In other news, the remains of Capt. Lawrence Dickson have been identified. He was the first of more than two dozen black aviators known as Tuskegee Airmen who went missing in action during World War II. Dickson was twenty-four when he went down on a mission over Austria on December 23, 1944.

Meanwhile, remains believed to be those of fifty-five American servicemen were flown out of North Korea on Friday. “These incredible American heroes will soon lay at rest on sacred American soil,” President Trump said.

A fifty-fifty chance of survival

It takes courage to do a hard thing that others will not do. If it were easy, it would already be done.

Rocket Men is Robert Kurson’s bestselling story of the Apollo 8 space mission. I was gripped by the book from start to finish. Kurson timed his narrative for the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned mission to leave Earth’s orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return to Earth safely.

While I was vaguely familiar with Apollo 8 (I was ten years old at the time), I remember far better the Apollo 11 mission that placed the first man on the Moon six months later. What I didn’t realize was that, without Apollo 8, there would have been no Apollo 11. If NASA could not fly astronauts safely to and from the Moon, they obviously could not put them safely on it.

Nor did I realize the incredible courage of the three men who made the journey. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders flew on Saturn V, the most powerful machine that had ever been built….