96 denverlifemagazine.com | APRIL 2019
that was then...
NAVYPHOTO,^ NASA;JACK^SWIGERT,^THE^DENVERPUBLIC^LIBRARY,WESTERNHISTORYCOLLECTION‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’
T
hose famous words—or at least the slightly edited version uttered by Tom Hanks as
flight commander Jim Lovell in the 1995 movie Apollo 13—have become the go-to
phrase any time something goes terribly wrong. The
phrase actually came out of the mouth of Denver native
JACK SWIGERT, who was Lovell’s command module pilot aboard
the famously aborted lunar flight on April 11, 1970. Swigert, who
graduated from East High School and CU, had wanted to fly ever
since he was a kid, earning enough money from a paper route to
take his first flying lessons, getting his pilot’s license at age 16, and
eventually becoming a fighter pilot. The moon shot was a fluke.
Swigert was actually a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, becom-
ing a main character in one of NASA’s most heroic moments: After
an oxygen tank exploded in the service module, it wasn’t clear if
the astronauts would make it back to Earth safely—but after several
nail-biting days, the trio splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April- Swigert went on to run for Congress in 1982—and won—but died
before he had a chance to serve his country again. DLM
SAFE BACK HOME A NAVY HELICOPTER WORKS TO PICK
UP THE APOLLO 13 ASTRONAUTS AFTER THEIR NAIL-BITING
RETURN TO EARTH.