The day James Lovell and Tom Hanks spoke at the National Press Club

The passing on Aug. 7 of Apollo 13 astronaut James Lovell at the age of 97 brings to mind the day he spoke at the National Press Club with actor Tom Hanks on July 26, 1995.

For Speakers Committee Chair Mark Johnson of the Media General News Service, it was a high point of a lifetime. Johnson said he was “a shameless NASA fan, growing up during the Apollo and Shuttle programs.

“I have enormous admiration for astronauts, especially those early years when everything was unproven and only partially known – courage born out in Lovell’s Apollo 13 mission,” Johnson posted on Facebook after Lovell’s death.

With the movie about the fated Apollo 13 mission coming to theaters in the summer of 1995, Johnson saw an opportunity to do a boffo National Press Club Luncheon.

Lovell flew twice in the Gemini program, the follow up to Mercury and the second step toward the Apollo moon landings. He was on the crew of Apollo 8 – the first humans to orbit the moon, before the Apollo 13 survival story.

“So, getting him to speak at the Press Club was a career and life milestone. Adding Hanks was a no-harm-in-asking moment,” Johnson wrote.

He said he called Lovell for two reasons: “I was a Washington-based reporter and wanted his help with a story about spaceflight and NASA, but I also had a second, volunteer job that year of lining up the Luncheon speakers for the National Press Club. I extended an invitation.”

“What do you want me to talk about?” Lovell asked when Johnson got him on the phone.

He said he told Lovell he would love to have both him and Hanks at the podium.

“I’m going to talk to him in a couple of days,” Lovell said. “I’ll ask him.” 

“Hanks agreed and the two put on a now-legendary event. They offered thoughtful insights and plenty of delightful anecdotes.” Johnson wrote. “Lovell allowed that, when the movie deal for ‘Apollo 13’ was sealed, he knew exactly who should play him. Hanks, sitting next to me at the lunch, feigned smugness.”

“Kevin Costner,” Lovell said, to Hanks’ hammed-up look of shock.

The program was a Hollywood-lit reminder of how exploration, including space exploration, has been the catalyst for the timeline of human advancement and that explorers such as Lovell took some of the riskiest steps, Johnson wrote.

For a link to audio from the 1995 NPC luncheon, click here.  

And for a link to a video from the C-SPAN archive, click here.