The Astronaut Wives Club Part 3

The editors told them that the cover shot would be taken from the chest up. Life's instructions, coordinated with NASA, were that the women wear prim and proper tailored pastel shirtwaist dresses for one of the group shots. Their big national magazine debut, and NASA wanted them wearing plain-Jane shirtwaist dresses?

The wives discussed it endlessly over the phone, starting the astronaut wife tradition of the round-robin phone call, a party line that would stretch throughout the s.p.a.ce race. How dare the government tell them what to wear? They were astronauts' wives now!

There was also lots of discussion about what color lipstick they should wear for the cover picture. Most of the wives didn't wear any makeup except for lipstick, so the color was very important.

All the fashion and homemaker magazines suggested that they "think pink." Pink was the color of the First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower. The wives had read all about Mamie and her "million-dollar fudge," which the thrifty housewife could make as a special treat for her husband without breaking her grocery budget. They knew about Mamie's White House routine. At 11 a.m. every day, she had her hair done in her famed Mamie bangs. She dabbled in correspondence and women's luncheons, and then she and Ike usually had dinner in front of the five o'clock news.

In the Pink Palace, as reporters acerbically called the White House, several rooms had been repainted "Mamie Pink," the First Lady's signature Pepto-Bismol hue. Pink was in vogue: pink dresses, pink pocketbooks, pink carpeting, pink Maytag washing machines, even pink poodles, which were all the rage among fashionable Parisians.

So it was agreed: Responsible Pink for the perfect Astrowife.

The Astrowife round-robin kept the women up to date on what the other wives thought about this or that, and allowed them to scheme together accordingly.

"Hmm," thought Betty, if one of the girls fussed over her looks too much. "She's one of those."

Betty wasn't gung ho for group activity, but she was grateful that the round-robin gave her a chance to hear what the other wives were up to. Not that the Grissoms gave a d.a.m.n about keeping up with the Joneses.

One day, Marge invited some of the wives over to her house in Stoneybrook to try out a facial mask (a favorite was the Edna Wallace Hopper white clay mask), but Betty had already decided she wasn't going to spend an extra dime to go to the beauty parlor. Not that Gus complained about what she spent. Gus was not cheap about certain things. He was the only astronaut to splurge on air-conditioning in their car, the latest luxury for automobiles. When the Life money had rolled in, the only thing Gus said to Betty was, "There are two things that I request. Do not do anything different with your hair. And no frilly bedrooms."

"I don't think you are going to have to worry about either one of those," Betty a.s.sured him.

She felt pleased with the all-yellow ensemble she had pulled together for the photographs-a marigold scoop neck for the cover, and for the group shot with the Mercury capsule, a sunny yellow shirtwaist dress, cinched at her slim waist with a belt. She had taken some care to find yellow sungla.s.ses and perfectly matching yellow b.u.t.ton earrings at a local department store, and considered herself the best dressed of the wives. Like Trudy, she would wear her NASA dress b.u.t.toned up to the top. Gus was more of a leg man anyhow. Whenever he'd tell her, "Your legs are good-looking," Betty would shine inside.

"Betty's a Hoosier," someone explained on the party line, "and she's kind of stubborn and she's not as socialized as the rest of us."

Nevertheless, when the big day of the shoot rolled around, Marge and Jo didn't mind Betty chauffeuring them in her air-conditioned car. She pulled into Jo's driveway bright and early. It was true what the other wives said about Jo. She was the perfect Navy wife with her white gloves and pearls. Today she was wearing seventy-dollar white high heels.

Marge was late, making Betty and Jo wait in the car while she put on her finishing touches, probably going to work with her tweezers on her "beauty mark." Jo thought Marge, a fellow Navy wife, should be abiding by their code, the first rule of which was to always be on time. It was important to have a good memory for things like what O-hundred hour your husband's ship was to sail. And as they waited, it got closer and closer to the hour scheduled with the photographer.

"Shoot," said Betty. That was one of her favorite expressions. She honked her horn.

Jo could hardly keep from rolling her eyes at Betty's unladylike turn of phrase; "very Air Force," she thought.

Marge finally came out of the house, waving her hands about madly. She made some excuse about having to feed Acey. As soon as Marge offered her a cigarette, Jo forgave her.

Marge and Jo were the smokers of the group. Betty was not too happy to have these chain-smoking chimneys in her car. She hated smoke. Back in Mitch.e.l.l, Indiana, she'd had to endure Sunday drives with her dad, who smoked big cigars and insisted that all the windows be kept closed. It always made Betty sick. Finally she convinced her mother to let her stay home. She'd even been willing to forgo a delicious three-scoop cone from the place that made its own ice cream in order not to have to ride around in a cloud of smoke.

Now she was an astronaut wife and had to get along with her cohorts, so she set her jaw and pressed the pedal to the metal.

At Langley, Ralph Morse, the Life photographer, looked through the viewfinder of his camera. The women were all noticeably nervous, so Ralph kept on moving around and talking in his New York accent while he set up hot lights. It was better this way because if he stopped for a moment, the women might pa.s.s out cold. Life had big plans for the wives and he needed the pictures to be perfect.

For the cover shot, Ralph arranged the wives like numerals around a clock face. Their formation mimicked the placement of their husbands, whose cover story, "The Astronauts-Ready to Make History," would come out the week before the wives'. The wives smiled and blinked into the bright popping flashbulbs. There was plenty to chat about while Ralph set up the next shot, like how the boys had all decided to quit smoking now that they were astronauts and starting their training. Jo's pack-a-day husband, Wally, claimed to have kicked the habit so as not to have a nicotine fit in orbit. He would still light up cigarettes, but wouldn't inhale. Jo was almost ready to throw him out of the house, he was so irritable.

The crowning shot was taken on a gra.s.sy Langley field under a perfect blue sky. Ralph set the ladies up in a pleasing arrangement, positioning them on the metal ap.r.o.n of the red model of the Mercury capsule their husbands would ride into s.p.a.ce. This very capsule had recently been dropped into the Atlantic and survived! Instead of some egghead from Langley Research Lab giving the women a little lesson about where the parachute was folded away in the capsule, the wives got something along the lines of: "You in the pink, sit next to the gal in the yellow, yeah, yellow, don't move, you're in the middle next to Snow White-"

The wives looked like scoops of ice cream around an upside-down cone. Just as NASA and Life had ordered, they were all in their pressed pastel shirtwaists, white and pale blue and-roses? Rene had astonished the wives by wearing red heels and a bold dress, blooming with red cabbage roses. Actually, Rene's dress matched the s.p.a.ce capsule perfectly! How could the Life editors not be amused? Rene really made the shot zing. The wives each placed a manicured hand on the capsule, like models selling a Maytag. Perfect!

It was torture waiting weeks for the magazine to come out, but finally the day came, September 21, 1959. The cover bore the headline "Astronauts' Wives': Their Inner Thoughts, Worries." There they were, seven well-coiffed "typical" American housewives with smiling red lips. The wives had been airbrushed to perfection: there were no pimples, no puffy eyes, no crow's-feet or fine lines around the lips. But what about those lips? They had all worn pink lipstick, but here they were in red?

The wives were completely shocked, worrying about how America would judge them. They would never wear such a bold-colored lipstick. They were mothers, not vixens done up in Racy Red. What had happened to Responsible Pink?

In the towering Time-Life Building in New York City, the editors had decided against Mamie Pink because it was fast going out of style. This was the s.p.a.ce age after all, and the flare of a bright Patriotic Red on the Astrowives' lips better promised America the Moon and the stars. Soon, bouffant hairdos whipped up to the heavens appeared on runways, on sidewalks, and in typing pools, along with frosted "Moon Drops" lipstick, launched by Revlon as "the lipstick to wear to the moon."

The wives pored over their fifteen-page "Seven Brave Women Behind the Astronauts" spread. Through touching up and editorial tinkering, Life had transformed seven very different, complicated women into perfect cookie-cutter American housewives. There was not a whiff of domestic turbulence.

In her Life profile, Trudy came out strong for her Gordo, proving herself his biggest supporter with total faith in his piloting skills and his grace under pressure. Deke's wife, Marge, certainly didn't mention her ex-husband, a lesser Air Force pilot who had turned out to be a pathological liar. It was because of him that she'd left the United States for j.a.pan and then Germany, where she met Deke. She knew Life wouldn't want that piece of history anyway. A perfect Astrowife being a divorcee?

Instead, Marge's ghostwriter had put in how sick Marge was of the Hollywood version of a military pilot wife, crying into her dirty dishwater over the loss of her man. Marge had seen more than a few girls turn into widows at Edwards, and promised herself that if she lost Deke in s.p.a.ce, she'd take her lumps without sugar.

"You learn to take the things your husband does in stride," Trudy told her ghostwriter, but she didn't care to elaborate on that statement.

It had taken some overtime for the New York editors to turn Betty Grissom into the quintessential fifties housewife. Sucked dry of all her character and verve, Betty could now be admired by readers across the country and held aloft as a role model. Whatever eccentricities the wives displayed, Life was complicit with NASA in erasing quirks such as thirty-year-old Betty referring to herself, because of all she'd been through, as "ole Betty."

As far as being a red, white, and blue all-American, no one could beat Annie Glenn, which led to a complaint that none of the wives could explicitly state on the round-robin: why hadn't they gotten the lead? The answer was right there on the page. Annie's dark hair perfectly framed her face, which, just like her balding redheaded s.p.a.ceman's, was sprinkled with freckles. The seemingly perfect Annie had known John all her life, having met him when they were just toddlers in their hometown of New Concord, Ohio. Annie's dentist father, Doc Castor, stuck her in a playpen with Johnny during their local teetotalers' monthly dinner club potluck.

Color photos featured Annie in a cherry print headscarf driving the boat as Johnny water-skied across the glistening blue Chesapeake Bay inlet, a more middle-cla.s.s version of Senator John F. Kennedy's family at Hyannis Port. Annie was just what NASA wanted the wives of its seven astronauts to be-a squeaky-clean American housewife standing proudly beside her husband with her spatula ready to whip up something tasty for her hero who was beating those G.o.dless Russians in the s.p.a.ce race. Annie fit the part perfectly; she even played the organ for Sunday evening home sing-alongs, which featured Broadway hits and Presbyterian hymns. Like Miss America contestants, she had her "talent." Annie was the Ultimate Astrowife.

Annie spoke of faith in G.o.d and country. When John was picked for the program, she said she went to see her family minister to make sure the higher power approved of man's exploration of its realm. "There's no religious reason why mankind, and John in particular, should not explore s.p.a.ce," Reverend Erwin a.s.sured her.

"What if that thing is up there going around and around," she confessed to America, "and they aren't able to bring him back? What would I do?"

In the Glenns, people across the nation saw America's values and ideals-faith, bravery, family-personified. And in Annie's confession, their own hopes and fears about this crazy, bold, amazing step America was going to take were reflected back at them.

If the other wives didn't want to watch John Glenn become the first man to go into s.p.a.ce, they had their work cut out for them.

The Cookies

Across the land, housewives opened their glossy Life magazines and saw seven glorious women they could look up to and emulate. If only they could whip up an apple pie or a perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies like Annie Glenn, maybe their husbands would be more productive, better fit their gray flannel suits, and get ahead in business.

n.o.body wanted to be left in the backwash of the s.p.a.ce age, so the pressure to have an exemplary family life, from Walla Walla, Washington, to Presque Isle, Maine, was greater than ever. No matter what a wife had to sweep under her carpet, keeping a peaceful marriage was not just an imperative of American womanhood, but in this day when everything could be wiped out at the push of a b.u.t.ton, a matter of national security. The seven Astrowives would show them the way.

Soon, the astronauts were off to the Convair plant in California. Here was where they were building the Atlas rocket that would fulfill Project Mercury's goal of putting a man into orbit around the Earth before the Russians did. As usual at these Astro-junkets, the red carpet was rolled out and the boys were put up in the first-cla.s.s Kona Kai Resort, a tropical oasis of lush gardens with torchlights and white-sand beaches on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific at the tip of Shelter Island off San Diego.

Alan Shepard got a room with twin beds, which didn't exactly fit his plans for the evening, so he asked to switch rooms with Scott Carpenter, who'd been a.s.signed a full-sized bed. Scott handed over his key and Alan headed off to his new room. Why did Alan need the extra mattress s.p.a.ce? As the story went, Alan had gone across the border and picked up a chiquita in a bar in Tijuana, the den of sin for many a lonely sailor stationed in San Diego.

In the middle of the night, John Glenn was woken up by a phone call from John "Shorty" Powers, the NASA press officer known as the "voice of the astronauts and Mercury Control," who had been a cheerleader in high school. Shorty had gotten a call from a paper that was ready to run a story, complete with incriminating photos.

John was livid. He convinced the reporter and the photographer and the editor, who he got out of bed, not to run the story. It was a matter of national security. The next morning, John asked for a "seance," which was what the seven astronauts called their closed-door meetings. This one would be forever known as the Kona Kai Seance. As John saw it, any astronaut who couldn't keep his "pants zipped" threatened to ruin everything and squash America's opportunity to beat the Russians, not only in s.p.a.ce but also on the grounds of moral superiority. They all had a responsibility to the country to be the wholesome heroes they were sold as. John went head-to-head with Alan over the issue.

They didn't come to any agreement, but the overriding feeling was that any extracurricular monkey business was each man's own private affair, so long as he kept it out of sight. All the same, Alan didn't exactly try to hide his philandering. He was seen at swinging parties and golf tournaments with multiple women hanging off his arms and was spotted cruising the Strip in Cocoa Beach in his white Corvette, customized by Chevrolet with a "s.p.a.ce age" interior and racing tires. Thank G.o.d their husbands weren't like Alan, the wives thought.

"How do you think Louise puts up with him?" they asked. But of course they didn't want to pry too much or say anything that could even remotely affect the compet.i.tion that was foremost on everybody's mind-which of the astronauts would be the Chosen One to go up first?

The astronauts were spending most of their days down in Cocoa Beach, the "Jewel of the s.p.a.ce Coast," working overtime at nearby Cape Canaveral, the military base that housed the astronaut headquarters, including their "procedures trainer," a s.p.a.cecraft simulator. The Cape was where the actual launch would take place in the spring of 1961. The big day was fast approaching when, after a ma.s.sive and intensive effort by NASA, the t.i.tanium Mercury capsule would be nearly complete. One of their husbands would ride this "can" into s.p.a.ce for the first suborbital flight-just a fifteen-minute shot up and down, but long enough to a.s.sure his place in history as the first man in s.p.a.ce.