Charles Walker was a space mission specialist on three shuttle flights in 1984-85. Before Walker went into space in 1984, he said he wanted to take something from Bedford, Indiana – his hometown – with him. He took along seeds from the Indiana sweet gum. He returned from the 1984 space shuttle Discovery flight with 200 tree sprouts, called “space gummies”. He later donated one of these sprouts to his hometown of Bedford, Indiana. American Heritage Trees was honored to receive seeds from one of the sweet gum, collected by the US Forest Service in the fall of 2014.
