Remembering Bill Anders
Major General William Alison Anders (USAFRes) died on June 7, 2024. Born on October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong, he spent most of his childhood in San Diego, CA and La Grange, TX. He was ninety years old at the time of his passing.
Accomplished in many fields, Anders was most widely known for being a crew member aboard Apollo 8. That mission was notable for many firsts, among them, Anders and his crewmates Frank Borman and James Lovell, were the first humans to leave Earth orbit and orbit the Moon. They completed 10 orbits before safely returning to Earth. Apollo 8 helped ensure that President John F. Kennedy’s ambitious goal of a landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out could be reached. As a result of their efforts, Anders and his crewmates were named Time magazine’s Men of the Year for 1968.
Prior to departing for their return to Earth, they hosted a live Christmas Eve television broadcast during which they famously read from the first ten verses of the Book of Genesis. At the time, this transmission from space was the most widely watched telecast in history.
In time, those achievements and recognition were outshined by a photograph that Anders had taken before that Christmas Eve broadcast. One of Anders’s mission assignments was to photograph and document the Moon’s geological features. During their fourth orbit, the Command and Service Module was positioned such that as Anders photographed the lunar surface, he spotted the Earth emerging above the lunar horizon. After taking a number of shots with the black and white film loaded in the camera, Anders changed to color film. He continued to take more photographs, quickly varying the camera’s settings.
Among his series of exposures was one that has become known as Earthrise. In it, the Moon’s gray landscape and the blackness of space are contrasted by a hemisphere of blue and white swirls of the distant Earth.
Earthrise would go on to be named among the 100 Photographs that Changed the World by LIFE Magazine. The image has been identified as one of the inspirations for the first Earth Day held in 1970 and has been said to have catalyzed the environmental movement that took hold in that decade. Most recently, in June of 2024, the New York Times included Anders’s Earthrise among its list of the 25 Photos That Defined the Modern Age.
Prior to his career at NASA, Anders attended the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, graduating in 1955 as a Distinguished Graduate. In doing so, he had followed in his father’s footsteps. His father, Arthur F. Anders was USNA Class of 1927 and a career Navy man. He had earned the Navy Cross, the service’s highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor: While serving on the Yangtze River as an officer on the gunboat Panay, that craft came under Japanese fire. Assuming command for the seriously wounded captain, Lieutenant Anders, also injured, issued orders to return fire.
William Anders’s career departed from the path his father had set. Upon graduation, he received a commission in the United States Air Force. After completing his pilot training, in 1956 he joined the 84th Fighter Interceptor Squadron Black Panthers flying out of Hamilton Air Force Base in California. There he flew fighter / interceptor missions tracking heavy Soviet bombers. In 1957, he did the same with the 57th Fighter Interceptor Black Knights flying out of Keflavik, Iceland. There, he famously had a close encounter with a Soviet bomber, during which he flipped a less-than-friendly greeting to the enemy pilot. Anders later returned to the 84th Squadron in California. To increase his chances of gaining entry to the test-pilot program, Anders next applied to and was granted entry into the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He graduated with a master’s degree in nuclear science in May of 1962. On his 30th birthday in October of 1962, he received word that he’d been selected as a member of NASA’s third group of astronauts.
In 1969, Anders was requested to chair the National Aeronautics and Space Council where he served until 1973. He resigned his military commission to honor the request. He was then appointed as a Commissioner of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, where he served until 1975. He was then appointed as the founding Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He served in that position until he was appointed as Ambassador to Norway in 1975 and served as Ambassador until he resigned from his civil-service career in 1977.
While also re-entering military service as a part time USAF Reservist, Anders entered private industry, working first for General Electric in its Nuclear Products Division and its Aircraft Equipment Division. In 1980, he left GE to join Textron as its executive vice president for aerospace. After nearly a decade with Textron, he became vice chairman of General Dynamics. By 1991, he was chairman and chief executive officer. He has been credited with masterminding General Dynamics’s remarkable turn-around to greater profitability and relevance as the end of the Cold War transformed a highly competitive industry, and his leadership at GD is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. He retired in 1994.
While pursuing this career in the private sector, Anders worked as an Air Force Reservist in many classified programs as a member of the Defense Science Board and in other capacities. He retired from the Reserves as a Major General in 1988.
In retirement he and his wife Valerie (Hoard) shared their time between the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest (where Anders’s father had briefly been stationed) and San Diego where the couple had met. He continued to pursue his passion for flying and boating. They also traveled widely and engaged in various philanthropic ventures. Several of the latter were related to outdoor education, appreciation for and preservation of the natural environment, as well as founding the Heritage Flight Museum with a mission to honor veterans and enrich the presentation of military history.
At the time of his death, Bill and Valerie were approaching their 69th wedding anniversary. That long-lasting relationship produced six children. They had four sons—Alan, Glen, Greg (Judy) and Eric (Lori) —and two daughters—Gayle (Carl) and Diana (Andrew). He is also survived by his thirteen grandchildren.