Joe Allen, seated, made a recent visit to North Montgomery High School. He is pictured with Andrew Showers, left, and Kevin Brooks. Allen is a Crawfordsville native who was a capsule communicator tasked with sending messages from the ground to the Apollo 11 moon landing crew, which included Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. Allen was on the astronaut support crew for Apollo 15 in 1971 and returned to space aboard the Discovery in 1984. After retiring from NASA, he led a commercial space company and was chair of a defense contractor. He resided in Washington, D.C. for many years, then returned to Crawfordsville, where he now resides.
