Jim Lovell will forever be associated with his travels to space, but his impact on Earth – notably in his adopted hometown of Lake Forest – is eliciting many positive memories from his friends and neighbors.
Lovell, the famed astronaut who became a national celebrity when he was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970 to space that nearly ended in disaster after an explosion. Lovell and his crew were rescued and he became a national figure. Lovell, who Tom Hanks later portrayed in the popular 1995 movie about the flight, died August 7 in Lake Forest. He was 97.
In the days since Lovell’s passing, many Lake Forest residents offered their recollections of individual encounters with Lovell. That group included Mike Rummel, the city’s mayor from 2005-09.
Rummel said he first met Lovell in 2008 when the retired astronaut was the grand marshal of a popular dog parade of the time, hosted by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association that included bagpipers.
While Lovell walked his beloved golden retriever, Rummel brought a “mutt”, capable of getting fidgety. After the parade started, Rummel was soon cringing as he watched his dog charge over and put his nose between the legs of one bagpiper, who then let out a huge scream. Lovell observed the incident and then used a line closely resembling the iconic phrase now associated with the movie.
“Jim turns to me and said ‘we got a problem’,” Rummel happily reminisced. “Just getting the words we got a problem out of Jim was a great time.”
Rummel also recalled how Lovell was a guest for a presentation of the Lt. Dan cover band, which supports disabled veterans, when they played in Lake Forest in 2007. He said it was the first time Lovell had seen actor Gary Sinise (one of the band’s organizers) since the release of Apollo 13. Sinise portrayed astronaut Ken Mattingly in the film, where Lovell served as a consultant.
“It was a wonderful moment to realize you have a national hero,” he said.
Rummel added that when the city showed Apollo 13 at a local park, Lovell participated in a question-and-answer session.
Overall, Rummel described Lovell as a “wonderful guy who cared for the community,” who, despite his celebrity, remained humble.
“You had to call him Jim,” Rummel recollected. “He didn’t want to hear Capt. Lovell, he didn’t want to hear national hero. He just wanted to be Jim.”
Former Chicago Tribune writer Mike Conklin, a one-time Lake Forest resident, offered a similar sentiment about Lovell’s modesty.
“He was a friendly, outgoing guy,” recalled Conklin, who belonged to the same book club as Lovell. “He may have tired of the same questions all the time, but he never showed it. He handled it really well. He couldn’t go anywhere up here without someone bumping into him and immediately asking him about his ill-fated trip.”
Born in Cleveland and raised in Milwaukee, Lovell joined the U.S. Naval Academy later to earn an aeronautical engineering degree and soon joined NASA, where he would make four space flights, including Apollo 8, man’s initial flight to the moon, followed by Apollo 13.
After amassing nearly 8,000 flight hours, including 713 hours in space, Lovell retired from NASA on March 1, 1973. He shifted gears and entered the business world, and in June 1981, the family moved to Lake Forest. The decision to settle in the community was the byproduct of a previous trip for Jim and Marilyn Lovell.
“When deciding where to settle, he and Mom recalled an early memory from years before— traveling between their home in Milwaukee and Chicago, they had stopped in Lake Forest for a quick break,” daughter Susan Lovell said in a statement delivered through a family spokeswoman. “At the local Walgreens, they grabbed a bite at the soda fountain lunch counter, then took a short drive around the tree-lined streets. They both remembered thinking, “This would be a nice place to live.”
Following his retirement as a corporate executive and the release of Apollo 13, which introduced Lovell’s name to a new generation, he took on a new challenge by opening a restaurant on Waukegan Road in April 1999. The eatery initially drew many customers with diners intrigued by the décor featuring Lovell’s NASA memorabilia.
“It was such a wonderful addition to the town,” remembered Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Joanna Rolek. “It was a place the town was very proud of; it was lovely.”
Rolek lovingly looked back on how he would greet patrons.
“He used to be at the restaurant when he was in town, and he would come around to the tables and say, Welcome aboard,” she said. “That was his greeting to people at the restaurant.”
Among the people who met Lovell at the restaurant was a young U.S. Naval Reserve officer named Mark Kirk who was running for election to the U.S. Congress. He wanted to get the support of the “most famous Navy guy in the district.”
Kirk said he met Lovell at the restaurant and they talked for about two hours discussing their respective careers in the U.S. Navy. At the end of the meeting, Kirk learned he had earned Lovell’s endorsement.
“Since he was my childhood hero, it made me happy to no end,” Kirk said.
Kirk was elected to the U.S. House in 2000, where he would serve five terms. While in Congress, Kirk became concerned that local veterans could lose access to health care opportunities if the healthcare center in North Chicago were to close.
He said he went personally to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and said if a Washington insider were to hear that a federal healthcare in North Chicago was about to close, there would be little opposition. Thus, Kirk believed the branding of the medical complex was crucial.
“I said, Mr. Secretary, we need to name it after a national hero. If someone says we are going to close down this institution, they would have to admit they are against Jim Lovell, which sounds like you are against Apollo 13. It was almost anti-American.”
Rumsfeld agreed, and Kirk’s strategy paid off, leading to the opening of the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, which is a combination of a veteran and active duty Navy hospital.
Kirk said he remained in touch with Lovell when he was in the U.S. House and after his 2010 election to the U.S. Senate, where he served one term.
“I wanted him to be a vociferous proponent of a good space program, and he was,” Kirk said. “He always wanted to go back to the moon.”
Kirk also noted Lovell was the chairman of his military academy screening committee, allowing local students on their way to a military academy to have an opportunity to meet “a national hero.”
Back in Lake Forest, Lovell sold the restaurant to his son and daughter-in-law in 2009, and it eventually closed in 2015. However, he remained active in the community, specifically supporting Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.
Ginevra Stirling Ranney, who was active in Adler’s capital campaign at the time, said she first met Lovell about 20 years ago as the Planetarium was going through a transitional period and facing some financial pressures.
“We made a strategic decision that we wanted to embrace space history and space exploration as re-imagining the Adler,” she recalled.
Ranney said she asked Lovell to participate in the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Planetarium. He later joined Adler’s board of directors and was the co-chairman of a successful capital campaign, where the goal was to raise $35 million, and they far exceeded that by collecting about $54 million.
“He could open every door in Lake Forest. Some people knew him, and some people just knew of him at the time and were delighted and excited to meet a national hero. What I saw him do is turn those people into friends of the Adler,” Ranney said. “He had such an elegant and authentic way of using his extraordinary role in our national history as a way to connect people to larger ideas and causes.”
The Lovell Family created a legacy fund in 2024 to support the Planetarium, according to a current Adler official.
Lovell was the recipient of many local accolades and awards, including being named the inaugural “local legend” of the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff in 2007. Last year he received the Northeast Illinois Council, Scouting America, “Service to the Nation” Award.
Survivors include four children, Barbara Harrison, James Lovell III, Susan Lovell, and Jeffrey Lovell, along with 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Marilyn Lovell died in 2023.
