Former astronaut James Lovell, who as commander of ill-starred Apollo 13 famously said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” is selling his Lake Forest Home.
Lovell and his wife listed their 6,300-square-foot home on Lake Road with an asking price just under $3 million, Crain’s reported. The home is listed on a private agents network and will hit the MLS in the coming weeks.
Photos of the Lake Road home show some of Lovell’s memorabilia, which won’t be sold with the house. The wood-paneled library, among Lovell’s favorite rooms, has a large moon globe and multiple medal displays.
The Lake Road home (VHT Studios)
News of the sale comes as NASA marks July 20, 1969, the day that Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. Lovell retired from the space program in 1973 and moved to Lake Forest from Texas about a decade later.
Lovell bought the Lake Road home in 1999 for almost $2.8 million after living in another Lake Forest home since the early 1980s. Built in 1995, it sits on about an acre and is about a block from the town beach. The home has a wraparound staircase, crown moldings and leaded glass windows. The large kitchen also has a fireplace.
Lovell’s daughter, Susan, told the outlet that her parents wanted to buy a house that was large enough for the whole family to get together. “We were never on top of each other,” she said.
Lovell began his astronaut career in 1962 and flew the Gemini 7 and Gemini 12 missions orbiting the Earth as well as Apollo 8, the first to circle the moon.
His 1970 mission aboard Apollo 13 was recreated on film in the 1995 movie of the same name, in which Tom Hanks played his character and delivered the iconic line. Lovell made an appearance in the film as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the ship that retrieved the astronauts after they splashed down.
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