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| | CNN - Alan Shepard was 'a pretty cool customer' - July 22, 1998 |
 | | Shepard, a gruff, eighth-generation New Englander, was born in East Derry, New Hampshire, on November 18, 1923, and had the kind of storybook childhood that could have been illustrated by Norman Rockwell. |
 | | The son of Alan Bartlett Shepard Sr., a retired Army colonel and businessman, and Renza Emerson Shepard, he grew up on a farm and went to school in a one-room schoolhouse where he completed six grades in five years. |
 | | When he was selected to be one of America's first seven Mercury astronauts he was regarded "as a top-knotch Navy aviator, tough, quick-witted, and a leader," wrote Tom Wolfe in "The Right Stuff," his classic account of the early space program. |
| www.cnn.com /US/9807/22/obit.shepard.02 (1778 words) |
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