Fatal Ladder Fall Still Remembered

Pictured at the Graham Clark charity match are friends Stephen Kirkup, left, and Aaron Hall, his children Mason and Rhianna and dad Michael, back. 

Football match held in memory of tragic window cleaner who died after falling from ladders: A South Tyneside father who fell to his death from a ladder has been remembered through a football match in his memory. Graham Clark was 21 years old when his parents Elaine and Michael had to make the heartbreaking decision to turn off his life-support machine.

The window cleaner, from Tyne Dock, had spent almost a week hooked up to the machine after he fell 15ft from ladders while cleaning windows at a home in Laygate, South Shields. He had been due to become a father for a second time when he died on June 4, 2008.

Still grieving for the loss of their friend, a football tournament was organised in his memory by pals for the first time two years ago. This year, teams playing for the Graham Clark Memorial Trophy also raised over £600 for his two children, Mason and Rhianna, now aged eight and seven.

Mason was only six months old when his dad died. Graham did not get the chance to meet his daughter. This year the memorial contest was won by Buzzers FC, who beat eight teams to lift the trophy.

The event was organised by friends Stephen Kirkup, Aaron Hall, Graham’s brother Christopher and his dad Michael. Mum Elaine said: “This is the second year they’ve done this and I’m just over the moon they are helping to keep my son’s memory alive in this way.

“I feel so proud that people have taken time to organise the tournament and take part in something in memory of my son. “His two children always ask about their dad and it’s heartbreaking when they keep asking for him. “It’s really nice what his friends are doing, not just in his memory, but also for his children.”

Graham’s family would like to thank Jason Meiers for allowing the teams to use the pitches at Chuter Ede Community Centre, and 
everyone who took part, in particular those who 
helped organise the tournament.

The Moon Rock Window & Neil Armstrong

The National Cathedral dedicated a window titled the "Scientists and Technicians Window (Space)". These astronauts presented the National Cathedral with the moon rock on July 21, 1974, on the five year anniversary of the first lunar landing.

WASHINGTON, D.C. A true American hero is set to be honored in Washington Thursday. A public memorial service will be held for Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong died last month, at age 82. Services will be held at the national cathedral, but we spoke with the flight director of the mission that put Armstrong on the moon. By all accounts, Neil Armstrong would not have been comfortable with the tributes which have come since his death. He shunned the label of hero, though that's how he will be memorialized in Washington D.C. on Thursday. 

Washington National Cathedral's Space Window incorporates a moon rock from Apollo 11 at the center of the red circle in the stained glass.

At the Washington National Cathedral, embedded in one window is a rock brought back from the moon by Armstrong and the Apollo 11 astronauts, so it's fitting that one of the pioneers of space who brought that rock back would be given a public memorial there. Armstrong the man who made history so many years ago. He died August 25 after complications from cardiovascular surgery. He was 82. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard," former President John F. Kennedy said at the Rice University campus. 

It was 50 years ago Wednesday that President Kennedy set the U.S. on a course of space exploration. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said then. By 1969, the eagle had landed. Armstrong's boot marking on the moon the first human footstep. "We lost a tremendous human being. We lost a man who knew what he wanted to do," Apollo 11 flight director Christopher Kraft said. Armstrong was a private man but Kraft knew him as well as anyone. 

As NASA's first manned space flight director and director of flight operations during Apollo 11, it was Kraft who suggested Armstrong take that first step on the moon, not Buzz Aldrin. "We knew what he wanted to do, we knew how good he was at accomplishing whatever he set out to do and whatever we set out to do," Kraft said. It wasn't till 25 years later that the two talked privately about what they'd accomplished. Armstrong, Kraft notes, was unusually humble. That humility not found often among men who were daring to go where no one had gone before. "I didn't see that happen very often in astronauts," Kraft said. "He believed in the team, he believed in the people behind him." 

(L-R) Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Annie Glenn, astronaut John Glenn and singer Diana Krall watch a bagpiper pass during a tribute to U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong during a service at the National Cathedral in Washington September 13, 2012.

An image of the Space Window on the memorial service program.