Astronaut from Westlake honored with historical marker

The community is invited as The Westlake Historical Society will honor astronaut and Westlake native Robert Overmyer on Saturday, Aug. 23, at noon with an Ohio Historical Marker placed in Clague Memorial Park by the Clague pond gazebo. There will be a reception following the dedication in Clague Cabin.

We are pleased to have NASA Glenn Director James Free as one of our speakers, and the 25th Marine Battalion from Brook Park to present the flag of the United States. NASA plans to bring several displays as well as the always popular astronaut photo booth.

Col. Overmyer was a student at Dover Elementary and a 1954 graduate of Westlake High School. After joining NASA, he worked on the Skylab project and as a support crew member for the Apollo 17 mission. He piloted the Columbia and Challenger space shuttles in the 1980s and was part of the team that investigated the Challenger disaster in 1986. He died in 1996 while testing an experimental aircraft.

The Overmyer marker will be the sixth placed in the city of Westlake. Markers already installed around the city honor Westlake's first settler, Leverett Johnson; naturalist Jack Miner; Theodore Elijah Burton, a prominent politician and resident of the historical Dover Farm on Detroit Road; The Weston House, one of Westlake's oldest standing structures; and the Clague Family Homestead, property on Clague Road that houses the Clague Museum and Clague Playhouse.