He was not one of ours â if by âoursâ you mean an American but the further we go out in space, the less earthly distinctions like nationality will matter.
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Russian â a Soviet in the parlance of the time â and 60 years ago today he became the first human being in space.
That is an achievement we should salute no matter what country he hailed from or what political system he gave his allegiance to.
We Americans have grown up idolizing our own heroes, as we should.
Tom Wolfe, a Richmonder who graduated from Washington and Lee University, gave us âThe Right Stuff,â and then Hollywood gave us a movie.