‘Growing Up With Rockets’ Presented Friday at Evans Library

Documentary Examines Space Race from Family Perspective

MELBOURNE, FLA. — A documentary on the early days of the space program told through the experiences and memories of families of Cape Canaveral workers will be presented at a free event from 6:30-8 p.m. Friday, March 29, at Florida Tech’s Evans Library.

Growing Up With Rockets is a 1985 film by Nancy Yasecko, an award-winning director and daughter of a NASA engineer who grew up on the Space Coast, graduating from Cocoa Beach High School in 1972. The 60-minute movie touches on topics including Sputnik, the Cuban missile crisis and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and it ends with the first flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981, according to a summary from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which holds a collection of materials related to the production and marketing of the film.

Yasecko will attend the screening and participate in a question-and-answer session afterward.

Guests may also visit a model rocket display in the library lobby. The models are from the General John B. Medaris Special Collection, which consists of speeches, photographs and other artifacts depicting his life, with particular emphasis on his service in the military.

Medaris presided over the United States’ first successful space program, for which he assembled a history-making team of space scientists headed by Wernher Von Braun.  On June 13, 1963, Florida Tech awarded Medaris an honorary doctorate.

For more information, please contact Linda Khan at lkhan@fit.edu or 321-674-7450.

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