MITCHELL – On March 23, 1965, Hoosier Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom became the first person to travel into space twice when he and John Young piloted the Gemini 3 spacecraft.
After three orbits, the pair manually landed their spacecraft, nicknamed the Molly Brown, in the Atlantic Ocean performing the first controlled reentry.
You can see the actual Molly Brown on display at Grissom Memorial within Spring Mill State Park.
You can also visit Gus Grissom’s boyhood home. Free tours of his home are available without reservations every Saturday, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. from May through September. Group reservations can be made for tours at other times by calling the Mitchell Tourism Office.
The Grissom family moved to the home on Baker Street, now Grissom Avenue, in Mitchell, in 1926 when Gus was about a year old. Dennis and Cecile lived in the home until their deaths in the mid-1990s. After their deaths, concerned community members raised money to buy the home.
Interest in creating a museum in the home waned until 2014 when it was acquired by a new group of volunteers intent on bringing the house back to life to honor the memory of Gus Grissom, who was the second American to fly in space. Gus Grissom and fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in 1967 during a pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at Cape Canaveral, Florida when the command module caught fire on the launch pad.
​Volunteers brought the appearance of the home back to the time period when Gus was a child. With period furniture, decorations, pictures, and kitchenware, they’ve turned a simple house into a boyhood home.
You can learn more about Gus Grissom and his boyhood home and other events here.
