Note: I originally ran this story on my blog in September of 2023. After hearing about the passing of Jim Lovell on Thursday, I wanted to update the piece and share it again. It’s one of my most cherished experiences, and I feel lucky to have met such an amazing man. Even though I was totally clueless at the time.

 

One of my favorite WOW! Moments happened in 2003, but the story actually starts 12 years earlier—back when “Hammer” pants and shoulder pads were all the rage. It was 1991, and I was working in the custom publishing department of an ad agency as the editor of Cat Companion, a magazine published for Friskies Cat Food. Yes, that was a real job. We published page-turning stories like, “Lovable Personality Quirks of the Siamese Cat” (they’re clingy and vocal) and “How to Get Your Cat to Stop Using Your Ficus as a Litter Box” (get yourself some tin foil and pointy action figures.)

Every year, Friskies sponsored a national veterinarian convention and brought in the keynote speaker. One year, the speaker was Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 lunar mission. The man who almost got stranded in space and lived to tell the tale. Pretty epic, right? Not for 26-year-old Stephanie. I wasn’t much into astronauts. To me, the fact that Jim Lovell was there, in person, delivering the keynote, was basically a spoiler alert: clearly everything turned out fine. 

Nevertheless, it was my job to spend the day with him. We had lunch together. I escorted him to the auditorium when it was time for him to deliver his address. And then I brought him back to the Friskies booth where he signed autographs and I handed out food samples, pretending to love cats even though I’m a dog person.

When I got home, I excitedly told my parents, “Guess who I saw at the conference? Morris the Cat!” Jim Lovell didn’t even make the recap.

I didn’t think twice about how cool it was to spend an entire day with an astronaut until Tom Hanks played him in the movie Apollo 13 in 1995. Suddenly, I was like, “Wait a second … I met that guy.” I dug out the photo a coworker had taken (and I had shoved into a drawer) and showed my parents. They were amused—and maybe slightly concerned—that their daughter had been more impressed with a celebrity feline than with an astronaut who had stared death in the face.

Oh, but it gets better.

Fast forward to 2003. My dad, who worked for Chrysler, was organizing an auto dealership convention in Las Vegas. That year, guess who he hired to speak? Yep. Jim Lovell himself. When my dad met him, he said, “You met my daughter,” then he shared my little “Morris the Cat was cooler than you” story.

Now, I can’t say for sure whether being upstaged by a finicky tabby was a WOW! Moment or more of a facepalm moment for Jim Lovell, but either way, he was gracious. He grabbed a pad of paper from the hotel lobby and sent my dad home with a note for me that read: “To Steffi, I was more important than Morris the Cat! James Lovell, Apollo 13.”

 

 

My dad could barely contain himself when he called from Vegas later that day: “I’m bringing you something from the conference, and you’ll never guess what it is.” As usual, he was right. The note sits framed on my desk with the photo. And it’s one of my all-time favorite WOW! Moments. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded that WOW! Moments are even better when you make them happen for someone else.

So, have you ever given someone a WOW! Moment? And did it end up giving you one right back?