Press Release
Contact: Ronald Gonzales-Lawrence
Date: August 26, 2026
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (909) 397-4800 ext. 23885
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Astronaut Victor Glover Returns Home to Pomona and Inspires Students at His Former Elementary School
POMONA, Calif. — August 25, 2026 — Before he became a NASA astronaut, lived aboard the International Space Station and traveled around the Moon, Victor Glover was a student at Allison Elementary School in Pomona.
On Monday, August 24, Allison Elementary School welcomed one of its own back to campus as Pomona’s Congresswoman Norma J. Torres hosted a special homecoming for NASA Astronaut Victor Glover. The event gave today’s Allison students the opportunity to meet, hear from and ask questions of someone who once sat in the same classrooms and walked the same halls.
Pomona Unified School District and Allison Elementary were proud to partner with Congresswoman Torres and her office in welcoming NASA and Glover to campus for the special homecoming.
“The next time you look at the moon, you remember that a little boy who sat in a classroom like yours, who came to this school,” Torres told Allison students. She reminded them that Glover was born in Pomona and began his own journey in the same community.
“This was an extraordinary opportunity for our students because Victor Glover’s story began right here in Pomona,” said said Pomona Unified School District Board Vice President Dr. Roberta Perlman. “Our students could look at him and know that he once sat where they sit and walked the same halls they walk today. His journey is a powerful reminder that there is no limit to where their education, determination and dreams can take them.”
Allison Elementary Principal Dr. Melvin Cortez opened the program by welcoming students, families and guests to the school and welcoming Glover back to the campus where his educational journey began.
Congresswoman Torres, who hosted the event, then introduced Glover and reflected on the significance of welcoming a hometown hero back to Pomona.
The heart of the afternoon belonged to the students.
Glover spoke to students about his childhood, his journey to becoming an astronaut and his experiences in space before answering questions from students about everything from life aboard the International Space Station to traveling around the Moon.
For Glover, returning to Allison was deeply personal. He told students it was his first visit to the school since becoming an astronaut and his first time back in approximately 40 years. Standing in the Allison cafeteria, he remembered the tables where he ate lunch as a child.
“Being right here in this room, like I used to sit in this room and eat lunch, is coming home and is super special,” Glover told students. “This is home.”
Glover was born in Pomona and attended Allison Elementary before his family moved to Ontario. He went on to become a U.S. Navy aviator, test pilot, engineer and NASA astronaut. Selected by NASA in 2013, Glover piloted NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station in 2020, where he served as a flight engineer, spent 168 days in space and completed four spacewalks.
In April 2026, Glover returned to space as pilot of NASA’s historic Artemis II mission. Alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Glover completed a nearly 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The mission marked humanity’s first crewed journey to the vicinity of the Moon in more than half a century.
Just months after that historic journey, Glover returned to where part of his own journey began: Allison Elementary School.
For Allison students, the experience made the possibilities represented by science, engineering, aviation and space exploration tangible. The astronaut standing in front of them had once been an Allison student himself.
“What made this homecoming so special was watching our students realize that Astronaut Glover was once a student just like them, sitting in classrooms at Allison Elementary and beginning to imagine his own future,” said Pomona Unified School District Superintendent Darren Knowles, who attended the event. “Our children were able to talk with him, ask him questions and see for themselves that extraordinary journeys can begin right here in Pomona. I know they left believing that their own dreams can take them just as far.”
“When our students look at Astronaut Glover, they are seeing someone whose educational journey started at their school,” said Dr. Cortez. “It was an honor to welcome him back to Allison, but even more meaningful was watching our students interact with him. They were able to see that someone who started right here went on to accomplish something extraordinary.”
During the program, Congresswoman Torres presented Glover with a Congressional House Resolution 1489, honoring the Artemis II crew for its historic lunar flyby. Torres invited Allison students to make the presentation, telling them it was especially meaningful for the recognition to come from students sitting where Glover once sat and who could become future astronauts themselves.
Accepting the recognition from the students, Glover emphasized that the Artemis II mission belonged to the next generation as much as it did to the astronauts who flew it.
“This wasn’t my mission. This was your mission,” Glover told the students.
The event brought Glover’s journey full circle: from an elementary school student growing up in Pomona to a NASA astronaut who traveled to the International Space Station and around the Moon, returning home to inspire the next generation of students at the school he once attended.
Pomona Unified School District thanks Congresswoman Norma J. Torres and her team, NASA, Astronaut Victor Glover, and the Allison Elementary team for making this memorable experience possible for Pomona Unified students.
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Watch the full event: Astronaut Victor Glover Visits Allison Elementary
Video Credit: Julio Ruiz/Pomona Unified School District