A six pound, nine ounce boy was born in Orange on April 28, 75 years ago. Like hundreds of babies born here during World War II, his parents moved away.
John Oliver Creighton grew up in Seattle and didn’t return to his birthplace until some 40 years later. By that time, he was a NASA astronaut.
Creighton was the pilot of a Space Shuttle mission in 1985 and later commanded two other Shuttle flights.
Before his first flight in June 1985, Creighton and his mother, Alberta Creighton, visited Orange and dropped by city hall to get a copy of his birth certificate.
He was presented with a key to the city. The key’s design has a 1980s’ logo of Orange in the round part and a T with Texas written on it at the end. Creighton took the key on Shuttle Atlantis for STS 36 from June 17-24, 1985.
He presented the key back to the city along with a small U.S. flag taken on the mission. The key, flag and photographs of the crew, launch and Shuttle in flight are framed. The display is on view in the lobby of Orange City Hall.
“Presented to the People of Orange, Texas From the National Aeronautics and Space Administration” is in the middle with the signature of J.O. Creighton.
The Orange Leader was an afternoon daily newspaper in 1943. Creighton’s birth was at the top of the birth announcements on April 28 that year. He had been born early that morning.
“Mr. and Mrs. W.O. Creighton, 2303 Sixteenth street, announce the birth of a six pound, nine ounce son at 1:30 a.m. this morning at the local hospital. He has been named John Oliver,” read the announcement.
The small, wood frame house on Sixteenth Street would have been new and part of a new development. It still stands today two doors north of the intersection with Sunset Drive. Prescribed Home Health currently has offices in the house.
The Creighton’s were fortunate to have a house. His birth was almost 17 months after World War II had started and Orange was booming with people coming to work in the shipbuilding industry.
The birth announcement says he was born in the “local hospital.” According to newspaper archives, the new hospital on “Highway 90” (Park Avenue at 20th Street and Burton Avenue), was near ready to open, but had not. That means Creighton would have been born at Frances Ann Lutcher Hospital in downtown. Births in Orange had boomed with the growth and numerous babies were born at a local clinic that was listed in some of the announcements.
The newspaper also had public service announcements that local families had a patriotic duty to rent their spare rooms for people working in the defense industry.
The Creighton family moved to Seattle. The astronaut’s official NASA biography says “”Born April 28, 1943, in Orange, Texas, but considers Seattle, Washington, to be his hometown.”
A read through Creighton’s biography and accomplishments sounds like he fits the line from “Men in Black.” “We’re here because you’re looking for the best of the best of the best, sir.”
After graduating from Ballard High School in Seattle, he went to the U.S. Naval Academy where he was graduated in 1966. He became a Navy pilot and carried out 175 combat missions in Vietnam and made more than 500 of the tricky landings on aircraft carriers.
Creighton was selected to the astronaut program in June 1978 and became an astronaut in 1979. For four years he held technical assignments to the Space Shuttle Program.
His first flight was from June 17-24 in 1985 when he served as pilot aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in STS 51-G. That was the flight where he took the Orange key to the second.
After his first flight, he served as the astronaut representative to the Shuttle Program Manager. That role took extra importance six months after his first flight when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after take-off in January 1986. He continued as the astronaut representative as the shuttle program was put on hold until safety issues were addressed.
He then had two more shuttle flights, both as commander. In STS-36 he was aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis from February 28-March 4, 1990. News reports from the time say the flight was a military secret and speculation was it involved a spy satellite.
His final flight was STS-48 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery from September 12-18, 1991. NASA says he had more than 403 hours in space.
Creighton retired from the Navy and the space program in 1992 and then went to work for Boeing as a test pilot.
NASA reports Creighton will participate in the Meet an Astronaut program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida from August 27-31 this year. He will be in the visitor center at scheduled times to meet the public.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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