Astronaut Eugen Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, and who died at the age of 82 on Monday, had Slovak roots. He was born in Chicago in 1934 to a father of Slovak descent and a Czech mother. His grandfather and grandmother came to America from the Kysuce region in Northern Slovakia to work in coal mines in the area around Chicago. Eugen Cernan visited Slovakia three times including the village of his grandparents Vysoká nad Kysucou. In 1994 a Memorial Room named after him opened in the municipal office building right in the centre of the locality on the occasion of his visit there. According to the website vysokanadkysucou.sk he gave locals "a few precious gifts; embedded fragments of moon rocks and a piece of the protective shield of the Apollo 17, which was called a Ship of America. "I've given you two things that returned happily from the moon mission, the third which comes among you is me," he said. The same year then Slovak president Michal Kováč awarded him the Slovak State Honour of the White Double Cross. A book of condolences has been opened in the memorial room in Vysoká nad Kysucou.
In addition to being one of 12 men to walk on the moon, Cernan was the third person to walk in space, following Russian Alexei Leonov and American Ed White. Cernan spent two hours and seven minutes outside the Gemini 9 spacecraft on the 1966 mission but had to come in early because his helmet visor was fogging up due to exertion. Cernan holds the moon's speed record, having driven the lunar rover at 18 km per hour on a downhill run. He almost missed out on Apollo 17 because he severely strained a tendon in his leg playing softball with NASA personnel two months before the launch.
