North Lancs reverend to invite another astronaut to village (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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North Lancs reverend to invite another astronaut to village
2:52pm Wednesday 3rd October 2012 in News
OVER Kellet’s ‘Bishop of the Moon’ is inviting veteran lunar astronaut Colonel Buzz Aldrin to visit his home parish.
The Rev Ken Clapham has already played host to two of the 12 astronauts who have landed on the moon.
And when he meets Mr Aldrin for a breakfast in Birmingham in two weeks time, he will invite him to talk to children in the village.
If he accepts the invitation, Col Aldrin – the second man to step on the moon after the late Neil Armstrong – will fol-low in the footsteps of James Irwin and Charles Duke, who have both visited Over Kellett.
“Once you become friends with one astro-naut you soon start to know most of them,” said Mr Clapham, who has just returned from a trip to the headquarters of NASA in Washington D.C.
“It would be fantastic if Buzz agreed to come but I’m not sure how likely it is. The last time I met him he was very friendly, quite an open guy.”
Since the 1980s, Mr Clapham has preached about the unlikely link between space and God to children and groups of adults across the north.
Two weeks ago, he went to America to speak to the head of the education department at NASA about the work he does in England and preached at Nassau Bay Baptist Church in Houston.
