Heroes

Buzz Aldrin

Bill Thompson

On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin was 39 years old, as he and Neil Armstrong became the first two human beings ever to set foor on the surface of the moon.

Fifty-one years sounds like a long time, but to those of us who remember watching it unfold live on TV, it’s almost like it was yesterday.

To untold millions of people all over the world, Buzz Aldrin, to this day, remains a larger-than-life hero. That’s why, when I met him in 2000, I was more than just a bit starstruck.

Aldrin had written his second novel, a fictional story of a disaster aboard a space shuttle. And, as you’ll hear, he was very focused on the future of space travel, not his past.

So here now, from 2000, Buzz Aldrin.

Buzz Aldrin is 90 now. He lives in Satellite Beach, Florida.

Peter Z. Malkin

Bill Thompson
Peter Z. Malkin

Sixty years ago this week, May 1960, a team of Israeli Mossad agents quietly traveled to Argentina, where they found and captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who was instrumental in organizing the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II.

A key member of that Israeli team was a young man named Peter Z. Malkin.

I met him in 1990, around the 30th anniversary of that famous episode. He had just published a book called “Eichmann In My Hands.”

Adolf Eichmann

And as he told me in that interview, the man he had been sent to capture had escaped from post-war Germany in the first place because of a mispronunciation of his name.

So here now, from 1990, Peter Z. Malkin:

Adolf Eichmann was brought back to Israel by Malkin and his team. Eichmann was tried and found guilty of war crimes, and was executed by hanging in 1962.

Peter Z. Malkin spent his final years in New York with his wife and children. He died in 2005 at age 77.

Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger

Bill Thompson

On a cold January morning in 2009, a US Airways flight left New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

At the controls that morning was veteran Captain Chesley Sullenberger, whom everyone called “Sully.”

Moments after takeoff, the plane ran into a flock of geese, disabling its engines.

Unable to reach any nearby airport, Sully and co-pilot Jeff Sykes safely guided the plane into the Hudson River, where it stayed afloat long enough to get every single persopn off the plane safe and alive.

Sully was hailed as a hero, and a few months later, wrote a book. That’s when I met him.

Here now, from the fall of 2009, Chesley ‘Sully” Sullenberger:

Chesley Sullenberger retired from US Airways in 2010, after a 30-year commercial aviation career.

Today he is a well-known aviation safety expert,

Tom Hanks played Sully in a 2016 movie.