The Astronaut Wives Club Part 14

Lady Bird called it "a thrilling, incredible, heart-in-the-throat moment." She wrote about the evening in her diary, "This was one of those incredible days that would make a book." LBJ was elated. Ed White was his own John Glenn, not a little fellow, but big and tall like Lyndon Johnson, and with a sweet little lady who wouldn't dare shut him out of her house. The president had big plans for Ed White, who, when asked how he was feeling during his s.p.a.ce walk, said, "Red, white, and blue all over." At the close of the film LBJ unveiled a Texas-size surprise.

"This may not make me too popular with your families," said LBJ, glancing at the Pats-Pat White and Jim's wife, Pat McDivitt. "But I am going to ask you tonight-in the very next few hours-to take the presidential plane and travel outside the country, again."

The astronauts and their wives wouldn't be spending the night at the White House as planned, but instead would leave at four in the morning to attend the American Air Show in Paris. There the astronauts would have a meeting with two Soviet cosmonauts, including the first man in s.p.a.ce, Yuri Gagarin. It was sure to be a vodka-fueled meeting.

After preflight drinks at the White House, Lady Bird led the Pats through her office into her private dressing room, with the promise of finding evening dresses, at least one for each. "After all, what does any woman think about when she hears she is going to Paris-clothes!" Lady Bird wrote in her diary.

To her delight, it turned out the Pats were both a size ten. "That's great-so am I," Lady Bird noted approvingly.

Picking up her First Lady's telephone, Lady Bird called her secretary and suggested they put on an impromptu fashion show. The Pats were getting a very rare privilege indeed. "Maybe 'Le Grand Charles' might invite them to a reception," cooed Lady Bird, referring to France's president, Charles de Gaulle.

The Johnsons' two teenage daughters volunteered to babysit for the Astrokids while their parents were in Europe. As the helicopter lifted from the White House to deliver the couples to Air Force One, waiting at nearby Andrews Air Force Base, Pat waved an excited good-bye to her seven-year-old Bonnie and her son, Eddie III, who were standing with Luci and Lynda on the lawn in pajamas and robes.

Jane's husband, Pete, went up next with Trudy's Gordo on Gemini 5. Perhaps influenced by his rootin'-tootin' grandma who'd ridden a covered wagon westward when she was a girl, Gordo picked the image of a wagon for their mission patch, with the slogan "8 Days or Bust."

Afterward, their worldwide tour, which had become a new tradition, took Trudy and Jane to Haile Sela.s.sie's Jubilee Palace in the heart of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. When the plane doors opened, a n.o.ble and slightly bored lion greeted them at the top of the metal steps and had to be led down with great ceremony before they could disembark. Two chained leopards greeted them on the palace steps, which smelled of big-cat urine.

In the middle of the night, Jane awoke to find palace servants at the foot of her golden swan bed, which Queen Elizabeth had recently slept in, gathering her clothes to be washed and pressed by morning. Throughout the Middle East and Africa, Pete and Gordo were presented with the traditional props of tribal warrior heroes, Masai spears and jewel-encrusted daggers (and cigarette cases). Haile Sela.s.sie presented Jane and Trudy with bracelets of gold and elephant hair. In Kano, Nigeria, the emir, in his royal robes and a striking turban that revealed only his eyes, took Trudy and Gordo aside and asked if they would consider leaving their teenage daughters, sixteen-year-old Cam and fifteen-year-old Jan, to join his harem.

A week before liftoff of Gemini 7 (which was going up eleven days before Gemini 6, with the two craft scheduled to "rendezvous" in s.p.a.ce), the NASA electrician was installing Marilyn's squawk boxes and emergency phone when the Lovells' collie, MacDuff, bit the poor man in the crotch of his pants. MacDuff got him bad, and it was a good thing the doctor lived next door. It was general chaos with Marilyn running around in a flap when Susan Borman arrived to take her to a wives' coffee at Marilyn See's house on the lake in Timber Cove. It turned out to be a surprise baby shower! It was a real shocker to Marilyn. Pacifiers and white leather baby shoes were lovingly hung from boy-blue ribbons affixed to the chandelier. Marge Slayton and Jo Schirra were there along with the New Nine gals, who had all chipped in to buy Marilyn a beautiful rocking chair.

"Did his voice change?" asked Marge when Marilyn recounted the harrowing NASA technician dog-bite saga.

Life snapped away, but was very nice about not taking a body shot of Marilyn, who hated the sight of herself full-Moon pregnant. In case the stork came while Jim was in s.p.a.ce, he had arranged for a "crew" and "backups" for taking her to the hospital:

1. Call Pete and Jane Conrad, who live a few blocks away.

2. Call Ed and Pat White if the Conrads cannot be reached immediately.

Ever since Jim had found out she was pregnant, he'd been teasing Marilyn that he hadn't been home long enough to get her pregnant. "If the baby has a gap between his teeth, we'll know Pete Conrad is the father," he joked.

"Gaps run in my family, too!" Marilyn laughingly reminded him.

Before Jim left for s.p.a.ce, Marilyn told Life, he cleaned out the garage, balanced the checkbook, and gave the old ba.s.sinet a fresh coat of white paint.

Blown up like a balloon, a very pregnant Marilyn smiled broadly for the magazine's embedded photographer. Jim would be going up on December 4 and spending two weeks in orbit, seeing if humans could survive up there for that long. Jim had always gone with his family to get the Christmas tree, but this year Marilyn decided to pick it out the night before he came back. She'd invited the neighbors to come decorate it with cranberries, popcorn, and gingerbread cookies.

Susan Borman's Frank was commanding Gemini 7, and she and her two boys, Ed and Fred, went down to the Cape to watch the launch. Overcome with the emotion all the astronaut wives felt during liftoff, she couldn't help but show it.

The newspapers printed the most devastating pictures. Susan was so upset that her face practically looked red in the black-and-white photos. In one, she was covering her face with her hands, hiding the tears running down her cheeks. Marilyn felt guilty when she saw those pictures. She was afraid that in comparison to Susan, America might think her uncaring.

Back in El Lago, looking at the pictures of Marilyn smiling for Jim, how could Susan not face the obvious? It didn't look good for an Astrowife to appear so distraught and worried. If Susan wanted to do her part to get Frank picked to go to the Moon, she'd have to steel herself and show she had the right stuff like he did. Frank always maintained the tough-as-nails, brash, rally-the-troops manner he'd adopted when he was a test pilot instructor at Edwards.

"Next to my old boys," said Marge Slayton on behalf of the Mercury wives, "I like him the best."

Susan did her best to keep calm over the next two weeks until her husband finally came back to Earth. She called the scene unfolding at her house the Death Watch. When Gemini 7 finally splashed down, the cases of champagne were brought out and the corks popped.

11

The Lemon

One foggy, snowy February morning in 1966, New Nine astronaut Elliot See was flying his T-38 toward the runway of the St. Louis airport. Down below, directly adjacent to the airport, was McDonnell Aircraft Building 101, where his Gemini 9 capsule was being built. Elliot and Charlie Ba.s.sett, who sat behind him, were there to see the finishing touches. Behind them in another T-38 were their Gemini 9 backups, Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford. Elliot zoned in for landing, but miscalculated his approach. He turned a sharp left to compensate and slammed into the roof of Building 101, sending his T-38 spinning like a pinwheel into the parking lot below. It burst into flames and exploded. Both men were killed instantly.

Astronaut John Young knew the new NASA protocol. Because Elliot See's wife lived down the street from the Lovells, he called Marilyn Lovell and told her that there had been an accident. As soon as she was a.s.sured it was not Jim, he instructed her to go around the corner to be with Marilyn See.

Marilyn Lovell couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You want me to be the one to tell her that Elliot was killed?"

"No," he said. "I want you to do something much harder-not tell her. She can't be told anything until I can come over and tell her officially. We don't want some overeager newspaperman knocking on her door."

It was shortly after 9 a.m., and having received similar orders, Jane Conrad dashed across the street, curlers flying out of her hair like plastic tumbleweeds as she ran. She tried to take out the rest and hid them in the pocket of her housecoat as she stood on Marilyn See's doorstep. Trying to catch her breath, she rang the bell.

Marilyn looked confused to see her this early in the morning. Jane had to pretend she'd just popped in for a friendly visit. Marilyn invited her in for a cup of coffee and the two went back to the kitchen. Soon the doorbell rang again. Jane knew what was about to happen; she had been dreading getting such a visit for years. But it wasn't John Young at the door. It was Marilyn Lovell, who came into the kitchen, also in curlers (she had just bathed her newborn, Jeffrey, and fortunately the baby nurse was there, so she could leave). She glanced at Jane. They could see they were burdened with the same shattering news. How could they explain both of them visiting this early in the morning?

Marilyn See poured another cup of coffee, but the wait was excruciating. Marilyn Lovell was so nervous, she could barely hold her mug, so she lit another cigarette, forgetting about the one still burning in the ashtray. As she tore off a match, her hands shook as she tried to light it. Staring at her strangely, Marilyn See exclaimed, "Marilyn, you're a chain-smoker!"

Finally the doorbell rang. John Young looked desolate as he delivered the news. Marilyn See began to cry and the three of them didn't know what else to do but huddle around and hug her. Still, no time could be wasted. Marilyn Lovell raced out the back door to pick the See children up from school, praying she'd get there before the press got to them.

After the news of Ted Freeman's death had been so bungled by NASA and the press, Togethersville banded together more than ever, especially protecting its widows and wives from the outside world. Family and neighbors dropped everything and started arriving at Marilyn See's and Jeannie Ba.s.sett's, ready to stay all day if they had to.

After hours of phone calls informing relatives of the news, Jane started off toward the door, but three-year-old David See hung on to her, needing to escape his mother's ceaseless crying. Jane took him home with her for the rest of the afternoon and put him into her bed to read him a storybook.

"My daddy's asleep," he said to Jane. "And now I'm going to go to sleep, too."

Over the next few weeks Jane went to Marilyn See's almost every evening around five, the hour when Jane longed for Pete to return. She also visited Jeannie Ba.s.sett. It wasn't easy for either of the widows. Jeannie, Charlie's widow, hadn't been told the gory details until she read about it in Time magazine. Her husband had been decapitated. Unfortunately for Marilyn, Elliot had been flying the plane when he and Charlie died. An airplane accident was always seen to be the head pilot's fault, an opinion that got pa.s.sed on to some of the wives, so, in addition to heartbreak, there was also an undercurrent of blame.

Women around the country were finally organizing to stand up for their rights. In the three years since The Feminine Mystique had been published, the women's movement had been steadily growing. Its mission, as Betty Friedan had scribbled on a napkin, was "to take action, to bring women into full partic.i.p.ation in the mainstream now." In the summer of 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed, just around the time of the first official meeting of the Astronaut Wives Club. The intent of the latter was, however, quite different from NOW.

The meeting was held in the ballroom of the Lakewood Yacht Club, overlooking the inner harbor of Clear Lake. With over fifty wives in total, there were simply too many members of this exclusive club not to have official, organized meetings. In addition to the Mercury Seven, the New Nine, and the Fourteen, a group of nineteen more astronauts was added in April 1966. The new boys called themselves, tongue in cheek, the "Original Nineteen." Everybody wore handwritten nametags. Upgraded to soph.o.m.ore status, one of the Fourteen wives peered down to read the names of the incoming freshmen, like Jan Evans and Gratia Lousma.

"I hope one day we don't need the nametags anymore," she said sweetly.

It was 10:30 a.m. on the first Tuesday of the month, which would be the day for all future meetings. Though the wives would take turns acting as hostess, everybody knew that it was Marge Slayton who was really in charge. The "A.W.C." was Marge's baby, and along with Louise Shepard, she coordinated it. It was only fitting since their husbands, Deke and Alan, were running the Astronaut Office together over at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center. The younger wives called them Mother Marge and Lady Louise. Marge had chosen Tuesdays because it was usually such a drab day, with husbands gone until Friday. The A.W.C. was something for all of the wives to look forward to, especially the younger ones. After doing some bits of business, welcomes, announcements, updates on the last Gemini flights and the upcoming Apollo program, Marge asked if there were any questions before they settled down for coffee.

The new wives had plenty of questions. Perky Nineteen wife Jan Evans had attended a tea party at Marge's when she'd first arrived in Togethersville, where she'd seen a recent picture of the Mercury wives next to a photo taken of them at the beginning. Marge had arranged them in their frames side by side as a conversation piece. It was amazing how different the two photos looked-from babes in the woods, some a little chubby or a little frumpy, to strong, confident women in full command of their position as astronaut wives-as dramatic a change as the "before" and "after" pictures in a magazine makeover. How did the Mercury wives do it? The new wives were itching to know, but in a group of fifty women, each of whose husbands was jockeying for the upcoming Apollo missions, they were afraid of asking the wrong questions. What if a gal said something that might reflect badly upon her husband? The ballroom fell silent. There were no questions.

On her own time, Rene Carpenter visited newcomers, who were often in awe of how glamorous she was. Rene dropped by one new wife's house wearing a chic pale blue blouse. Waving her hand in a circle, Rene told her, "You only get to go around once." The moral the new wife took from these words was: savor every minute of it because you only get one life to live.

Rene was beginning an exciting new career. Gus Grissom had caught wind in the Houston Chronicle that Rene had been offered a syndicated newspaper column. After going to the trouble of having no windows put on the front of his house, Gus didn't want to worry about the press coming in through the back door.

"So, you gonna write about me?" he asked.

"No," Rene a.s.sured him. "You're not interesting enough."