Segmented into five parts, the book begins with introduction to Freeman and an overview of NASA’s Apollo Program before going back in time, to Freeman’s formative years in Lewes and the lifelong friendship he would form with future fellow pilot Joe Hudson, whom he first met at age 7. Guilfoil recounts with equal parts detail and nostalgia the early years, when Freeman and Hudson were flying single-engine PA-18s as fish spotters, dropping messages in bottles to local fishing boats from the sky, alerting them to where the schools of menhaden were.

Later in the book, Guilfoil describes Freeman’s time at the U.S. Naval Academy — where he graduated near the top of his class — including his training as a U.S. Air Force jet pilot and subsequent Apollo training in Houston before segueing to his local legacy and the mark he left on local teachers and students at Del Tech’s Theodore C. Freeman Powerplant Education Building in Georgetown. Chock-full of evocative archival photography, Guilfoil, in the end, paints a loving tribute to an estimable man of vision, courage and self-sacrifice — one who was exceptional in life yet so classically emblematic of the region that raised him.

Guilfoil’s timing for the release of Afterglow is impeccable, as it coincides with NASA’s 50th anniversary commemoration of the period between July 1969 and December 1972, when NASA successfully landed 12 Americans on the Moon. To this day, the feat has never been duplicated. Amazing what Americans can do when they work together.