TITUSVILLE, Fla. If the late Alan B. Shepard was larger-than-life, he is even more so in death.

In the rotunda of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on Monday, March 20 the three daughters of the first American to fly in space unveiled a heroic-size bronze statue of the pioneering astronaut before a standing room only crowd that included the four surviving Project Mercury rocket riders.

Entitled "The Spirit of Space," the statue perched upon a three-foot (1-meter) pedestal is a towering 6 feet, 10 inches (2.1 meters), or about a foot taller than Shepard was when he climbed into a cramped Mercury capsule and rocketed his way into the history books on May 5, 1961.

The four surviving Mercury astronauts gather before the new statue of Alan Shepard at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. From left, Scott Carpenter, Gordo Cooper, Wally Schirra, and John Glenn.

"Golly, if Daddy had actually been this tall, he never would have been selected as one of the original astronauts," Juliana Shepard Jenkins joked as she and Shepards other two daughters Laura Shepard Churchley and Alice Shepard Wackermann peered up at the giant artwork.

"It really represents Alan B. its a lot of brass," quipped fellow Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra, the notorious jokester of the original seven Mercury astronauts.

Shepard died July 21, 1998, at age 74 some 37 years after his 15-minute suborbital jaunt aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket propelled the nation on to an ambitious drive to send humans to the moon and back. The Freedom Forum, an international foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people, commissioned the statue. Shepard served on the foundations board of trustees from 1993 until his death.

Perhaps the most cocksure of the Mercury astronauts, Shepard was the embodiment of "The Right Stuff" a brash, swashbuckling risk-taker who had all the characteristics that Hollywood and the public associates with the image of the astronaut hero.

"I tried to put into this sculpture something I would probably call `TheWhimsical Side of Alan Shepard."

But at the same time, sculptor Robert L. Rasmussen a personal friend of Shepards and director of the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida said he wanted to capture more than just the uncommon valor, courage and pioneering spirit exhibited by Shepard.

"I tried to put into this sculpture something I would probably call `The Whimsical Side of Alan Shepard," said Rasmussen, a former member of the U.S. Navys vaunted Blue Angels flight demonstration team.

"He was always somebody who impressed me as the guy who really didnt take life too seriously. He liked a good joke on others and himself, probably the former more than the later," Rasmussen said.

"He didnt really consider himself a hero, or anybody special, but he knew that everyone else as a matter of fact did and he fit pretty comfortably into those shoes, filling that role. And I think, maybe, he was just a bit amused by all of it."

Shepards historic flight came at the height of the Cold War, a time when the United States and the former Soviet Union were pitted in a global battle for technological and ideological supremacy. Ten years later, he became the fifth human to explore the moons surface as the commander of the Apollo 14 mission.

Allen Neuharth, founder of the Freedom Forum, remembers the latter mission well.

"Alan Shepard, as some of you may or may not know, became the first newspaper boy on the moon," Neuharth said. "Everyone remembers that he took a golf club to the moon with him. He also took a capsule of the Florida Today newspaper with him to the moon and delivered it there."

A Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper, Florida Today serves the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral areas.

Shepards space exploits are well-known, but the looming statue also honors the former naval aviator for establishing the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has awarded more than $1.1 million in scholarships to deserving college science and engineering students since 1984.

He also was the driving force behind the construction of the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which has inducted 44 astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz projects. Located just west of the gates to Kennedy Space Center, the hall of fame contains the worlds largest collection of personal astronaut memorabilia. A significant portion of the proceeds from ticket and gift shop sales goes to college scholarships.

Fellow Mercury astronaut John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962 and flew aboard shuttle Discovery in late 1998, said Shepard in the long run might be best remembered for those charitable efforts.

The scholarships are going a long way toward "bringing along scientists and engineers from the younger ranks that will take the place of all of us who were committed to being in the program here," Glenn said. "That, to me, is Als real legacy."