Been thinkin’ a lot about my friend Pete Conrad, the astronaut who commanded the second lunar landing.  Pete was killed in a motorcycle accident on my birthday, July 8, 1999… Pete and I were about the same age.

I remember Pete’s oft-stated philosophy: “If you can’t be good, be colorful.”

When astronauts die, NASA conducts a ceremony and plants a tree down at the space center in Houston and cloaks each tree with lights in their memory.  Pete’s fellow Apollo 12 moon walker was astronaut Alan Bean who delivered Pete’s eulogy at the tree planting ceremony.  Sadly, Alan died just this past May.

Alan said that Pete, in keeping with his “colorful” philosophy, told Alan to make sure his tree had colorful lights, not just plain lights as are on all the other memorial trees.

During the eulogy Alan said that Pete spoke to him from heaven, demanding colorful lights for his tree.  The audience was in shocked silence.

Alan was also a painter, a fine artist.  What else could you expect, murmured a few officials?

But today there is one, and only one, tree at NASA Houston cloaked in colorful lights… some years it’s red, other years multicolored, honoring one of the most colorful astronauts ever to explore the heavens.

Read more about Pete Conrad here: Gentlemen of Gloucester, Pete Conrad Third Man and First Trooper On The Moon