Cavuto: Gene Cernan is my hero

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan and FoxNews correspondent Neil Cavuto
from segment airing August 22, 2012. Video 4:04 HERE.

Neil Cavuto

Your World/FoxNews

Ok, I think I can die now.  I have spent a day with a guy who's been my hero all my life.

Full disclosure. I am fully biased. I think Gene Cernan is among the best of the best.  The last man to walk on the moon giving me unprecedented access to his world.  A world rich in heroes, and achievements, fighter planes, and rockets. A bygone era from a generation that never knew the word "can't."

I was still a boy when I watched Cernan having the time of his life on the moon...in that last visit by human beings to the moon.  Even as a kid, I could see the kid in Gene...A guy who didn't see his time up there as a "mission," but a "passion."

And one...that even drove he and colleague Harrison Schmitt...to song.  I said Gene was a hero. I never said he was a singer.  I joked yesterday with Gene, as I have so often shared with many of you on this show...how much I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid.

I did, I really did. I mean, I was a nut about it.  When other kids my age were collecting baseball cards, I was collecting astronaut autographs.  And reading everything I could get on every mission I could follow.

I had Gemini models, and Apollo models, lunar modules. Command modules. I'd pretend in my room, I was in a rocket in outer space.  Frankly, it worried my mom and dad.

But lo and behold it got them to do something that would forever change my life.

View the segment from Cavuto's "Your World," HERE.