Don Braaten: “I saw it come down” — the first manned space flight of Freedom 7

By LeAnn R. Ralph 

Editor’s Note: Michelle and Troy Knutson interviewed Don Braaten and provided the tape of the interview to the Colfax Messenger.

COLFAX  — It was 63 years ago — May 5, 1961 — that Alan Shepard became the first American to travel in space with the launch of the Mercury-Redstone 3/ Freedom 7 flight from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Shepard and Freedom 7 traveled in suborbital flight for 300 miles in 15 minutes and reached an altitude of 115 miles.

When Freedom 7 splashed down in the ocean, helicopters hooked onto it and took the spacecraft to the USS Lake Champlain.

“I saw it come down. Three parachutes opened up. It came down about a mile and a half from our ship,” said Don Braaten of Colfax.

Braaten graduated from Colfax High School in 1959 and then joined the United States Navy.

He was assigned to the aircraft carrier the USS Lake Champlain, and that is where he spent his entire duty of three and a half years. He achieved the rank of third class petty officer and was a steelworker for the Navy.

“They loaded it up with helicopters onto our ship. John Kennedy. He was the president, and he gave us a call,” Braaten said.

“The president of the United States calling our ship. We thought that was a pretty big thing. I’m only 20 years old,” he said.

“My daughter has a Zippo lighter, with the spaceship. It’s an antique … there’s a medallion shaped like the spacecraft, too, that my other daughter has,” Braaten said, noting that 3,000 of the Zippo lighters had been made for the sailers on the USS Lake Champlain commemorating the Navy ship and the Freedom 7 flight.

“I’m not sure how many (of the sailers from the Lake Champlain) are still alive,” Braaten said.

“We were off the coast of Florida. That’s where Cape Kennedy was. My brother was on the same ship, but he was home on leave. He didn’t have the opportunity to see it. That was Dave. He was on board the ship before I got on,” he said.

Brothers

Braaten grew up with three brothers: Dave, Tony and Jerry. Dave and Tony have passed away, but Jerry Braaten lives in Chippewa Falls.

When Freedom 7 launched with Shepard as the commander, the cape was called Cape Canaveral. After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, the name was changed to Cape Kennedy, but then in 1973, the name reverted back to the Spanish name of Cape Canaveral, which means place of reeds or canes. 

The cape was visited by the explorer Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513.

“I signed up for that ship, and I got it. (Dave) was home on leave. He missed out on the big thing. He couldn’t say he was there,” Braaten said.

“He saw it on TV. His ship. He watched it on TV. That was a big thing for him. He was home on leave, and there was his ship,” he said.

In the Navy

“I think six weeks was the longest we stayed in one spot,” Braaten said of his service in the U.S. Navy.

“We went to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Quebec. Virgin Islands. St. Thomas. Jamaica. Cuba a couple of times. Jacksonville, Florida. Virginia. New York City … we pulled right up to the Statue of Liberty,” he said.

“When I got discharged, I got in a car accident. My best buddy got killed,” Braaten said.

“We were celebrating our discharge (but) it wasn’t a celebration. We ended up in the hospital. I had three or four broken bones myself. My nose. My arm,” he said.

“The driver was in the hospital. They put me next to him in the hospital. But we lost our best buddy,” Braaten said.

To this day, Don Braaten does not know why he was not the one who died in the car accident.

“We stopped into Rita’s Bar for a drink. For some reason, I was riding shotgun next to the driver. Then for some reason, I said, ‘I want to sit in the back seat. I’m kind of tired’ … we hit a tree head-on. From where I was sitting, that was the guy that got killed,” he said.

“He was from Chicago. What made get in the back seat is beyond me. After that, I came home and went to Minneapolis,” Braaten said.

Electrician

Braaten worked on an assembly line at first and then went to drafting school.

Eventually he became an electrician.

“I retired as an electrician (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) …been retired for 20 years,” he said.

Braaten is the son of Mary Schwartz Braaten and Marvin Braaten.

“My mother was a sister to Gladys Tandberg,” he said, noting that his mother was 98 when she passed away.

Mary Braaten died April 23, 2019, at the Colfax Health and Rehabilitation Center.

Braaten’s father had nine brothers and sisters, and Mary and Marvin and their children lived in Eau Claire until Don Braaten was 14 years old.

“My dad was killed in a car accident, and then we moved back to Colfax. I was 14. He was 36,” Braaten said, adding that at the time, he thought his dad seemed like an old man, but that now he realizes how young his father actually was when he passed away.

USS Lake Champlain

The USS Lake Champlain was launched from the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on November 2, 1944, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command website.

The ship was selected as the prime recovery ship for the first manned space flight and sailed for the recovery area in the Atlantic Ocean on May 1, 1961.

Commander Alan Shepard splashed down in the spacecraft Freedom 7 May 5, 1961, about 300 miles from Cape Kennedy/Cape Canaveral while helicopters from the carrier USS Lake Champlain visually followed the descent of the space capsule, according to the website.

The helicopters flew to where the spacecraft splashed down within two minutes following impact.

The USS Lake Champlain was decommissioned May 2, 1966, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command website.

According to various information available on the internet, the USS Lake Champlain that was on duty to recover Shepard and Freedom 7 was the second of three ships in the United States Navy that have been named the USS Lake Champlain.