The kid will make a great managing editor some day.

I met Pete Conrad a few years back while wandering around the exhibit floor of the Western Cable show. Perhaps spotting my press badge, a woman at a deserted booth walked up to me and said, "Would you like to meet Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad?"

"Boy, would I."

There sitting on a small stage by himself was the man who yelled "Whoopee!" while hopping joyously across the lunar surface. Twenty-some years later, he was no less enthusiastic. We talked for several minutes about his near-flawless flight to the moon in November 1969.

Conrad, the Navy fighter jock and aeronautical engineer, had put his lunar lander, nicknamed "Intrepid," down 600 feet from the unmanned Surveyor 3 parked on the other side of a crater on the Ocean of Storms. "Piece of cake," or words to that effect, Conrad said.

Since Armstrong and Aldrin had shown the effectiveness of a manual descent to the surface, overriding computer controls, Conrad said his mission was to demonstrate that a pinpoint landing was possible. Coming down in sight of the Surveyor proved it could be done.

Indeed, the Apollo commanders competed with each to see who could bring their craft down closest to the chosen landing site. Conrad probably won.

He and I talked a few minutes more before I asked him-being the hero-worshipping sycophant I am-to autograph some paraphernalia being handed out at the booth. He graciously agreed, making out the salutation to my son.

Pete Conrad's autograph has been on my son's bedroom bulletin board ever since.

Conrad's death was tragic, of course, and ironic. Dying the way he did after spending so much time riding tin cans into space packed with explosives. But he was undoubtedly out on that California highway having fun when the end came, the wind in his face.

Conrad was quoted by the AP as saying recently that "Time flies when you're having fun, and I've been having fun for the last 30 years.''

Conrad's generation, the generation that pioneered space exploration, is slowly fading away. The spirit these brave men exhibited made the American space program go. It only seems right that we should remember them and try to preserve their spirit, building upon it if we can.

Astronaut Pete Conrad was 69.