A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II.

Shepard was designated as the commander of the first crewed Project Gemini mission, but was grounded in October 1963 due to Ménière's disease, an inner-ear ailment that caused episodes of extreme dizziness and nausea.

[3] The two were descendants of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren,[2] and were related to Scottish emigrants from Berneray in the Outer Hebrides, through the Shepard line.

[11] The following year he began cycling to Manchester Airfield, where he would do odd jobs in exchange for the occasional ride in an airplane or informal flying lesson.

He easily passed the entrance exam to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1940 but at sixteen was too young to enter that year.

There he met Louise Brewer, whose parents were pensioners on the du Pont family estate and like Renza Shepard, were devout Christian Scientists.

[22] After just two days at sea Cogswell helped rescue 172 sailors from the cruiser USS Reno, which had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, then escorted the crippled ship back to Ulithi.

[22][30] In November 1945, Shepard arrived at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, where he commenced basic flight training on January 7, 1946.

[19] He narrowly avoided being court-martialed by the station commander, Rear Admiral Alfred M. Pride, after looping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and making low passes over the beach at Ocean City, Maryland, and the base; but Shepard's superiors, John Hyland and Robert M. Elder, interceded on his behalf.

[37] Shepard's next assignment was to VF-193, a night fighter squadron flying the Banshee, that was based at Naval Air Station Moffett Field, California.

Naval aviators with experience in jet aircraft were still relatively rare, and Ramage specifically requested Shepard's assignment on the advice of Elder, who commanded VF-193's sister squadron, VF-191.

[39] As squadron operations officer, Shepard's most important task was imparting his knowledge of flying jets to his fellow aviators to keep them alive.

That evening, Shepard discussed the day's events with fellow naval aviators Jim Lovell, Pete Conrad and Wally Schirra, all of whom would eventually become astronauts.

The director of the NASA Space Task Group, Robert R. Gilruth, found himself unable to select only six from the remaining eighteen, and ultimately seven were chosen.

[57][58] The identities of the seven were announced at a press conference at Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959:[59] Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.

[60] The magnitude of the challenge ahead of them was made clear a few weeks later, on the night of May 18, 1959, when the seven astronauts gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch, of an SM-65D Atlas, which was similar to the one that was to carry them into orbit.

[68] When Shepard heard the news he slammed his fist down on a table so hard a NASA public relations officer feared he might have broken his hand.

[68] He awoke at 01:10, and had breakfast consisting of orange juice, a filet mignon wrapped in bacon, and scrambled eggs with his backup, John Glenn, and flight surgeon William K. Douglas.

According to Gene Kranz in his 2000 book Failure Is Not an Option, "When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, 'The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.

He squeezed out of the door and into a sling hoist, and was pulled into the helicopter, which flew both the astronaut and spacecraft to the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain.

[84] Shepard was celebrated as a national hero, honored with ticker-tape parades in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal from President John F.

[95] In late 1963, Shepard began to experience episodes of extreme dizziness and nausea, accompanied by a loud, clanging noise in the left ear.

While on the Moon, Shepard used a Wilson six-iron head attached to a lunar sample scoop handle to drive golf balls.

Responsible for the on-board control of the spacecraft command module Kittyhawk and the lunar module Antares in the gathering of scientific data involving complex and difficult instrumentation positing and sample gathering, including a hazardous two-mile traverse of the lunar surface, Captain Shepard, by his brilliant performance, contributed essentially to the success of this vital scientific Moon mission.

As a result of his skillful leadership, professional competence and dedication, the Apollo 14 mission, with its numerous tasks and vital scientific experiments, was accomplished in an outstanding manner, enabling scientists to determine more precisely the Moon's original formation and further forecast man's proper role in the exploration of his Universe.

In July 1971 President Richard Nixon appointed him as a delegate to the 26th United Nations General Assembly, a position in which he served from September to December 1971.

[125][126][110] Following his death, President Bill Clinton issued a statement of condolences stating "he [Shepard] led our country and all humanity beyond the bounds of our planet, across a truly new frontier, into the new era of space exploration" and "his service will always loom large in America's history".

[127] Shepard's widow Louise had planned to cremate his remains and scatter the ashes, but before she was able to do that, she died from a heart attack—on August 25, 1998, at 17:00, which, coincidentally, was the same time of day at which he had always phoned her when they were apart.

[152] In 2011, NASA honored Shepard with an Ambassador of Exploration Award, consisting of a Moon rock encased in Lucite, for his contributions to the U.S. space program.

[158] The HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon starred Ted Levine as Shepard and covered not only his Mercury training but also his involvement in the Apollo missions.