William Carpentier

William Carpentier (born 1935/36, Edmonton, Alberta) and raised in Lake Cowichan, British Columbia.

Career Carpentier was selected as a flight surgeon trainee by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in January 1965 and made a staff flight surgeon the following July. According to Carpentier, he attempted to apply for appointment to the Astronaut Corps, however, found that as a Canadian he was ineligible to do so. Though he considered renouncing his citizenship, he chose not to after learning the process for naturalization as an American would take several years. During the recovery of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin from the Pacific Ocean, Carpentier was assigned to Helicopter 66, the primary rescue helicopter which ferried the men to the waiting . Both Carpentier and NASA engineer John Hirasaki – who had come into contact with Moon dust – were confined with the astronauts for their 21-day quarantine. In the period following their release from isolation, the publicity demands on Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin became so great that Carpentier was sometimes pressed into service to make public appearances in their place after a United States Department of State publicist concluded that the physician "was famous enough". (USS Hornet, in 2012, was a museum ship docked in Alameda, California, operating as the USS Hornet Museum.) A fountain at Lake Cowichan's Central Park is dedicated to Carpentier, as well as a local hockey team named the "Apollos", in honor of his contributions to the Apollo missions.