Name: CAIDIN, Martin S. Aged: 69
Born: September 14, 1927 Where: New York, NY
Died: March 24, 1997 Where: Tallahassee, Florida
Cremated: Ashes scattered by air along Cocoa Beach.
Married: Grace Testa When: 1952 (div.)
Married 4: Martha A. "Dee Dee" Autrey When: 1976
Awarded: Many aerospace honors and awards

Like Isaac Asimov, Martin Caidin wrote more non-fiction than fiction, his books numbering around 150. Unlike Asimov, Caidin was unschooled, self-educated, and a doer who actively participated in the race into space. He was with Wehner Von Braun's team in 1955 at Cape Canaveral. An active pilot and aerospace expert, Caidin wrote both historical works and historical novels as the actual events were happening.

Orphaned at an early age and placed in a home, taken in by his grandmother on an upstate New York farm, but then set out on his own in his early teens without finishing high school. (Daughter, Pam Caidin, adds, "My dad was not really orphaned. Only his mother died when he was 2. When his father remarried, the new wife did not want to raise him, so he was put in an orphanage. It affected his relationships for the rest of his life. I don't know the details of when and who sprung him from the orphanage, but I do know that he ran away when he was 15 and was living on his own in NYC, writing for magazines.")

In New York City, Martin was a loud and tough kid, a street survivor of numerous combats who claimed that half the bones in his body had been broken. Caidin never considered failure as an option. His self education was aided by a photographic memory and his manuscripts were typed first draft. One of Martin's friends, made during this time period, was another doer-dreamer, astronomer Carl Sagan.

Flying, in part for its dangers, soon became Caidin's passion and he absorbed everything about it that he could find. And Martin dearly loved aeronautical history. He saw its heroes as larger than life and worked non-stop to raise them up on pedestals. He went through hundreds of thousands of photographs for the military, creating in 1957, Air Force, a pictorial history of air flight and warfare for the USAF, and Golden Wings, another pictorial history for the Navy and Marine Corp in 1960.

Caidin began writing science fiction in 1956 with The Long Night. He wrote the novel, Cyborg, that was the basis for the TV program, The Six Million Dollar Man, and its spinoff The Bionic Woman. Caidin also wrote Marooned which became an Oscar winning film. And a recent collaboration with Jay Barbree on the results of the Hubble telescope's first photographs, l995's A Journey Through Time.

The March 27, 1997, issue of Florida Today used these words in its editorial tribute to Caidin, "An old soul, a young spirit. Terminally feisty. Forever ambitious . . . for himself, his people, his nation, his space program." Martin Caidin's name is permanently inscribed on the 'Roll of Honour' at the Kennedy Space Center.

Bob Button, a best friend of Caidin's, said, "Vern Renaud and I buzzed the beach and scattered Marty's ashes from a Cessna 172 the day of his memorial service. Hundreds of people came, gathered beachside at the Holiday Inn, drank a lot and told Caidin stories that would make you laugh, make you cry, or make your hair curl. This was a guy who truly lived life, enjoyed it to the max. He sorta liked most people, loved the company of a few, and got a kick outta shocking trivial types. Thin-skinned folks couldn't stand him . . . I think he made them cry. God, I miss him."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

BIOGRAPHY: Contemporary Authors, New Rev. Series, Vol 2, p96-7

OBITUARY: Buffalo News & Associated Press here & two excerpts from Florida Today.

George C. Willick, 514 East Street, Madison, IN 47250