Michigan Roadside Attractions on Travel the Mitten highlights our attempts to explore the many interesting things that can be found on the highways, byways and back roads of Michigan, ranging from the interesting to the unusual.

Downtown Grand Rapids is full of amazing art, with colorful murals on the sides of buildings and plenty of statues and sculptures in parks and in front of buildings. During ArtPrize this year we had the chance to walk around and check out some of the newer additions and find others that we had missed. In front of the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum you will find a seven foot tall statue of astronaut and Grand Rapids native Roger B. Chaffee, who tragically died in a fire during a test flight of the Apollo I mission to put a man on the moon. This statue was installed in 2018 and is an excellent tribute to a Michigan man who lived a short but amazing life.

Chaffee was born in Grand Rapids in 1935. He was an Eagle Scout (in the same troop that future President Gerald R. Ford had been in) and graduated from Central High School. He then went to Purdue University where he got a degree in aeronautical engineering, before becoming a Navy pilot. He would later be selected by NASA for its “Astronaut Group 3” as the attempt to put a man on the moon intensified.

In 1966, Chaffe, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Edward White were announced as the crew for the AS-204 flight. During training in January of 1967, a fire broke out in the command module and claimed the lives of all three men.

Other memorials to Chaffee in Grand Rapids include the Roger B. Chafee Planetarium at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Roger B. Chaffee Blvd. south of downtown, an exhibit at the Michigan Heroes Museum in Frankenmuth, and an annual scholarship for area high school students.

This statue’s artist is J. Brett Grill, who also did the Gerald R. Ford and Betty Ford statues outside the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, and Jay Van Andel in front of Van Andel Arena.