Mum's cousin, the space man

The guy in the headphones is my mum's cousin, Putty. He's sitting on the back of a lunar rover prototype, which he built. In other pictures, he's telling Apollo astronauts how to drive the lunar rover.
When we later watched those same astronauts drive on the moon, we'd no idea mum's cousin told them how to do it. None of us have ever even met Putty.
Early in the 1900s, my grandmother's sisters left Ireland on a steamship bound for Ellis Island. Tonight, thanks to the internet, I'm printing off pictures of Putty with some men who went to the moon and sending them to my mum. It's been a weird century.