The Astronaut Wives Club Part 11

"We've turned into a bunch of pumpkins," said Pete, looking at Jane.

On September 20, 1963, John F. Kennedy addressed the United Nations and proposed the unthinkable-a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. mission to go to the Moon. JFK and Khrushchev had managed to figure out how to avoid blowing up the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why not forge ahead and explore the new world together?

"Those were anxious days for mankind," said Kennedy before the UN. "Today the clouds have lifted so that new rays of hope can break through."

A new spirit of optimism rose over Clear Lake. The Mercury and Gemini astronauts welcomed the idea of a joint mission with the cosmonauts. The thought of working hand in hand with the Russians made it a little easier for the wives to accept that NASA had just chosen a brand-new group of astronauts, "the Fourteen," to help crew the upcoming Gemini and Apollo missions. This meant another gang of gals would be moving in, ready to take their share of the Astro-goodies. Oh dear.

A few months later, the infinite possibilities, from the sublime to the ridiculous, fueled the excited chatter at an Astrowives luncheon in the home of Del Berry, the wife of Dr. Berry, the "astronauts' doctor." When the telephone rang, Del, who was Trudy's best friend, answered. She gasped in shock and began urgently pointing to the television. One of the wives ran over to turn it on. Hands flew to mouths and cries filled the room. They couldn't believe it. The president had been shot.

All of the Mercury wives had met Jack and Jackie. The First Couple hadn't yet blessed the New Nine, but they'd met Governor Connally and his wife, Nellie, who were riding in the convertible with the Kennedys in the motorcade in Dallas. The wives were frightened and horrified-Kennedy had just been in Houston the night before, following a visit with the astronauts at the Cape! As the shock sank in, they couldn't avoid thinking about their own situation. Would the country still be committed to going to the Moon now that the president was dead? That gamble had been Kennedy's big idea.

Later that day, many of the Mercury and Gemini families gathered at the boat slip in Timber Cove, rolling their barbecue grills from their backyards down the streets to the landing. Somehow it just didn't seem right staying at home. The Glenns would soon be off to Washington; they were the only astronaut couple that had been invited to the funeral.

Continuing full steam ahead on Kennedy's dream of going to the Moon by the end of the decade, President Johnson renamed Cape Canaveral as Cape Kennedy a week later. A month and a half after Kennedy's death, John Glenn resigned from NASA to run as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Ohio. Robert Kennedy had suggested he do so two years before, and JFK had felt that Glenn was too valuable an American to risk his hide riding on a rocket again. Running for office now seemed like the right thing to do. America needed leadership more than ever. John knew it would be hard on Annie, who wouldn't be able to hide from the spotlight. Part of him felt guilty about constantly putting her in the firing line, but Annie always said she'd be up for whatever he was, a hundred percent.

Unfortunately, John slipped in the bathroom of his rented apartment in Columbus on a new throw rug Annie had laid down to soften the place. He hit his head on the bathtub and was laid up for weeks, leaving Rene to become the voice of his campaign. Rene had volunteered to help out on the stump, driving home John's message that politics didn't have to be a dirty enterprise, but could be as exciting and inspirational as sending a man into orbit.

In every town and city on the campaign trail, Annie would say to the crowds, "h.e.l.lo, I'm Annie Glenn." Then there would be a pause as she struggled to form her sentence. "You know I stutter," she'd continue. "So here's Rene."

The daily avalanche of mail was stacked in piles at the Glenns' in Timber Cove, where Annie would type replies.

"I thought it was wonderful for her to campaign for you while you were recovering," one woman wrote to the Glenns about Rene.

To this letter, John replied: "Rene's doing such a good job that she could probably run for office herself."

Ultimately, the injury forced John to withdraw from the Senate race. His neighbor was soon to join him in infirmity. During Sealab training in Bermuda, Scott hopped onto his motorbike and crashed into a coral wall, smashing his left arm and foot, crushing his big toe. It was no use. Scott was just not going to be able to make it for the underwater mission, although there was hope for Sealab II.

Togethersville

"Togethersville" was the ironic name journalists gave to the s.p.a.ce burb of Clear Lake City, the "City of the Future," with its subdivisions of Timber Cove, El Lago Estates, and the newest community, Na.s.sau Bay. As if adhering to the social hierarchies of the astronauts, this was where most of the new group of fourteen astronauts chose to build their dream homes. c.o.c.ky young Gene Cernan had a bird's-eye view of the developments from the c.o.c.kpit of his sleek T-38 Talon jet fighter, nicknamed the "White Rocket." The s.p.a.ce agency had chosen the plane, which boasted a cruising speed of 600 mph, to be its official astronaut trainer. All the astronauts were given one to fly to and from the Cape. Though, if you asked Gene, or "Geno" as the boys called him, he'd tell you the rest of the astronauts couldn't handle it quite the way he did.

From up high, Togethersville looked like Disneyland, complete with its own s.p.a.ce-age fortress-the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center on NASA Road 1, a complex of white, mostly windowless buildings in a quad housing gigantic, state-of-the-art computers. The astronauts loved to water-ski on Clear Lake, but none of them could compete with newly arrived Fourteen wife Beth Williams, who had been one of the beloved AquaMaids, the professional water-skiers who stood on top of one another's shoulders in pyramid formation at the Cypress Gardens theme park in Florida.

When Gene was flying below in Timber Cove, at the end of the cul-de-sac on Sleepy Hollow Court, he could make out the Glenn-Carpenter compound with Scott's big trampoline in the backyard. The neighborhood kids swung onto it from a tree rope. They were much better at it than Gene's colleague Walt Cunningham, who had volunteered for the NASA trampoline instruction program and promptly broken his neck. Luckily, he not only lived, but was soon back in the astronaut training rotation.

The community pool in Timber Cove was obviously designed to be admired from the sky. It was supposed to look like a Mercury capsule. Over at the Keys Club in El Lago, where most of the New Nine families lived, there was a synchronized swim team for the kids called the Aquanauts. They performed in aviator-style swim caps. Their best routine was a swim-dance to "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Another of the Aquanauts' big hits was set to "Goldfinger," the theme song from the latest James Bond movie. Gordo's teenage daughters, Cam and Jan, were the stars of that routine, covering themselves in gold paint they'd bought at the hardware store. Trudy was horrified when she saw her painted-up girls, perhaps taking too seriously the warning in the movie that gold paint suffocates the skin and could cause death if the full body were painted.

Over there was Na.s.sau Bay. Some of the stuffier types in Togethersville thought it the gaudiest of the s.p.a.ce burbs. It had the biggest houses, but from where Gene was flying, square in the catbird seat, they looked A-OK.

He could decipher quite clearly the Bean-Ba.s.sett-Aldrin compound on the corner of Point Lookout Drive. h.e.l.l, you probably couldn't miss that one if you were in orbit. The backyards were daisy-chained, and the three families were very friendly. A prizewinning local architect had designed the Ba.s.setts' house, a sandy-colored castle. The Beans built a pink brick chateau-style house. Sue Bean decorated it with imitation Louis XIV furniture, describing her taste as "almost French." The Aldrins' house was a two-story English Tudor. Joan Aldrin decorated Buzz's study in mahogany and midnight blue, with plush carpeting and heavy curtains, so that Buzz could have a home refuge in something resembling s.p.a.ce.

The Chaffees' was coming into sight. Roger and his wife, Martha, had attended Purdue University with Gene. Purdue, with its advanced-technology aviation program, came to be known as "the cradle of the astronauts." In all, twenty-two of the astronauts were Purdue graduates. The Mercury astronauts had been picked for their physical stamina, but as the program progressed and technology became more important, the astronauts' IQs and educations became more and more important, with many of them holding advanced degrees in engineering. Gene and Roger had both been in fraternities. Not long after Martha had been named homecoming queen and "Eternal Sweetheart" by a rival frat, Roger nabbed her. Lucky dog. That girl was drop-dead gorgeous, but no more so than his own wife, Barbara.

Gene had first noticed her at LAX, when he was a Navy pilot on leave. She was a big-haired, green-eyed Texas blonde, and beautifully filled out her snug navy blue Continental Airlines stewardess uniform ("We really move our tail for you" was the airline's slogan). Continental's signature red beret and white gloves captured his attention. Gene eavesdropped when she gave her last name at check-in-Atchley. She was flying out for a girls' weekend in Vegas. Pulling out his little black book, Gene wrote down the vitals along with the note Continental. He didn't even try to talk to her, but on his flight home to Chicago he got the girl's first name from the stewardess. After telling his immigrant father that he'd seen the woman he wanted to marry, Geno used so-called "devious means" to ring the girl up and insist that she knew him. She didn't believe him, but she made a date with him anyway. Lucky guy.

Gene took his T-38 down to buzz the roof of his low, cream-colored ranch house on Barbuda Lane, making the whole place vibrate. It was his way of saying to his wife, "Barbara, I'm home." After zooming overhead, he landed at Ellington Air Force Base and parked along the line of astronauts' T-38s. Here, NASA prepared its boys for weightless s.p.a.ceflight in KC-135 airplanes, dubbed "Vomit Comets." They would take off and fly in parabolas that included thirty seconds of zero G. Floating in orange and blue NASA flight suits and black combat boots, the men squeezed meal bags of condensed beef with gravy and shrimp with c.o.c.ktail sauce into their mouths. They tried not to throw up from "s.p.a.ce sickness." They brought home their food as homework. Once, a six-year-old named Sandy asked his father, "Are you eating s.p.a.ce food, Daddy? When are you going to start floating around?" An astronaut son playing house with his kid sister was overheard by a Life reporter as saying, "I'm going to work, I'll be back in a week."

Geno was back from his week at the Cape, where the rookie astronauts were training for the Gemini flights. It was a pain in the a.s.s of a thousand-mile commute to go home as often as he did, but it wasn't like he was some schmo in a Ford clanking down the Gulf Freeway. He was burning it out in his sleek T-38. And was ready to enjoy the pleasures of home. His fully stocked walk-in bar would be open for business and the hi-fi would play rock and roll all weekend long, baby.

Gene had been mowing his lawn in his sweaty T-shirt one weekend when one of the annoying Astro-tourist buses pulled over. The driver called from the window, "Hey, buddy? Any astronauts live around here?" As if he'd find Gene in a silver s.p.a.ce suit walking his blonde c.o.c.ker spaniel, Venus.

"I think a couple of 'em live over yonder somewhere," said Gene, pointing down the street.

Come Monday morning, Gene would return to the Cape, leaving his wife, Barbara, to deal with the critters in Togethersville. There were skunks, possums, armadillos, and cottonmouth snakes. The wives regularly found copperheads sunbathing on the hot hoods of their station wagons. Not to mention all the gawking sightseers from the s.p.a.ce tour buses who climbed over fences to steal a glimpse of a real s.p.a.ceman.

It hadn't taken Barbara long to realize how famous her husband was because he was an astronaut. On one of their many trips to Las Vegas, they'd met singer Wayne Newton. He was so taken with Gene and Barbara that he gave their daughter Teresa Dawn an Arabian colt.

Barbara's best friend was Sue Bean. Both were blonde Texans, although Barbara was more outgoing than demure Sue. There were no sidewalks in Na.s.sau Bay, so Barbara and Sue often walked together down the middle of the street, pushing their daughters in strollers before them. They always shared their concerns. "Everyone wants to touch him," Sue mused.

"They don't just want their autographs when they get off the plane either," said Barbara.

Well, what could they do about that now? Not a thing.

Sue didn't want her man's head turned by all the women now available to him. She had met her Alan when they'd both been on the gymnastics team at the University of Texas. Soon they were doing backflips for each other. Sue always called him Alan, but everyone in the astronaut corps called him Al, or "Beano."

The man was a perfectionist, with an engineer's exacting eye for detail. He was very particular about Sue's wardrobe, favoring her in pastels. He had such a precise hand that before one of Joanne Herring's parties, Sue's friends lined up to have Alan put on their fake eyelashes for them. He could align and glue the black wisps ever so precisely. Once he even dyed and styled Sue's blonde hair, pinning it around her head like a crown of spilling curls.

On his worktable was a half-finished mosaic of the astronaut insignia for the counter of their bar. Alan would work on it late into the night when he was home for the weekend, cutting gla.s.s and porcelain pieces in lunar white, mauve, taupe. Sue thought what he was making was beautiful, but sometimes she wished he'd leave the d.a.m.n thing alone so they could just enjoy their bar.

Sue wasn't sure what to think when Alan also began painting. He wore an old flight suit when he did so and kept his brushes clean and meticulously organized. They didn't even look as if they'd been used. His latest painting was of a clown, holding a red umbrella, balancing on a high wire. It was signed Al Bean, underlined.

One night, fun-loving Gene and good-time Barbara invited them to accompany them to a party, but Alan just shook his head and muttered about his workload. Since he'd been working all week and dined out every night, when he was home on the weekends all he wanted was a good home-cooked meal. On the other hand, Sue had been cooped up at home all week and longed to go out, or at least spend some much-needed family time together. But Beano didn't want to be distracted from his art, which he tackled as he did any other engineering problem-obsessively.

The Mercury and New Nine astronauts had already undergone desert survival training in far-flung locations like the active volcano of Mount Kilauea in Hawaii and a secret location in the Nevada desert. There, in the 150-degree surface temperature heat, the Fourteen underwent a demanding course in how to "live like an Arab." In billowing white robes made from parachutes, they sat for their graduation photo in gold aviator sungla.s.ses and dirty long underwear, looking like deranged Bedouin.

Next they went to Panama for jungle survival training. The Fourteen parachuted in pairs from helicopters over the jungle, carrying only the survival gear they'd have available in a Gemini capsule. They were to live off the land for a week. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live in nature-and eat fireside meals of iguana kabob served on a machete tip by natives in loincloths. NASA insisted that since a s.p.a.cecraft might land anywhere on the Earth, an astronaut had to be prepared for every climate and terrain. To the wives it seemed a little ridiculous-were their husbands really going to overshoot splashdown by a few thousand miles and land in the jungle? And if they did, wouldn't the natives serve them on kabobs? Why was NASA always finding ever more ways to keep their men away from home?

Sick of being grounded while their astronauts headed off to yet another exotic locale, Sue Bean, Joan Aldrin, and Jeannie Ba.s.sett, all part of that daisy-chained compound in Na.s.sau Bay, had gotten to talking. It was high time they did something about these absentee husbands. The three gals decided to greet their savage beasts in Mexico City upon their return from the jungle. It was at least halfway to Panama, and was sure to be a lot more civilized and enjoyable than the Panamanian jungle.

Sharing a hotel room in Mexico City, the ladies picked a restaurant out of the travel book that turned out to be just as advertised: warm and festive, with chilies and colorful strings of lights dangling from the ceiling. They pa.s.sed by a long table of women having a grand old time.

Joan spoke a little high school Spanish, and soon enough the three ladies were sitting with the locals, drinking margaritas, sampling the spicy salsas, and having a blast.

All of a sudden Joan got up and said, "We're going, get your things." She had a tendency to be dramatic, and was insistent they leave posthaste. Soon the three ladies were back on the street, a little tipsy.

"Why in the world did we leave?" asked Sue.

"Didn't you see that woman put her hand on my leg? Inching ever upward?" asked Joan.

The gals made it back to their hotel and woke up to find their guys strutting into the room, reeking of maleness. That was more like it.

The couples spent a few days sightseeing. The wives enjoyed being regular wives, doing tourist things with their husbands, rather than serving as arm candy for macho s.p.a.cemen in aviator gla.s.ses, playing "his charming wife." It was a too-short vacation, but it was so nice to be with their men on holiday for a change.

Buzz had smuggled a monkey onto the NASA Gulfstream that had brought them from the jungle to Mexico City. It was a miniature marmoset secured in a cage for the flight home.