The Astronaut Wives Club Part 25

Like the Beatles, he'd gotten into Transcendental Meditation, and felt greatly honored when Maharis.h.i.+ Mahesh Yogi came to visit the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center. Walking barefoot across the Schweickarts' lawn and into their Na.s.sau Bay home, the long-haired Indian guru in flowing robes sat cross-legged in their living room on a soft little deerskin one of his followers laid down before him. Smelling of flowers and incense, Maharis.h.i.+ gave Clare the gift of her own secret mantra.

Apollo 17 would be the sixth and final flight to the Moon. In total, the American s.p.a.ce program had taken the work of two and a half million people and had cost nearly $25 billion. During the landing of Apollo 11, President Richard Nixon had made what he called "the most historic telephone call ever made," from the White House to the Moon. He told Neil and Buzz, "Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one." But in December 1972, Nixon canceled the Apollo Program.

Saddled with a major budget crunch caused by the Vietnam War, Congress just didn't want to fund unlimited s.p.a.ceflight. Critics asked what exactly was America getting out of the Moon except a few rocks? Most Americans could only point to Tang, Teflon, and Velcro. They could not imagine how profoundly the advances made by NASA would affect their daily lives. The satellite communications networks of the 2000s, a direct result of the s.p.a.ce program, were still the stuff of science fiction. Though Saturn V rockets for Apollos 18, 19, and 20 had already been built and were ready to go, President Nixon shut down the remaining flights.

In 1972, during the final Apollo flight to the Moon, the wives went through a particularly traumatic experience. The Black September terrorist group, which had attacked during the Munich Olympic games, announced that it might be planning something more bizarre: going after the crew's families. Security details were attached to every family whose man was going to the Moon, with plainclothesmen following the wives and their children at all times. Miraculously, the press was kept in the dark.

The first night launch, Apollo 17 took off at 12:15 a.m. on December 7, 1972. Mission wives Barbara Cernan and Jan Evans and their families and friends watched the Saturn V lift into the sky on a brilliant burst of flame. The rocket's tremendous vibration of the Earth woke up the fish in the Banana River, causing them to thrash and jump out of the water.

"Aaaha! There she goes!" astronaut Ron Evans exclaimed in his s.h.i.+p America.

Back when Ron was in Vietnam, flying combat missions from the carrier Ticonderoga, his wife, Jan Evans, had called up Deke Slayton and volunteered him for the astronaut program. Now a nice fellow in a semi with open side doors lay down paper towels before lifting pet.i.te Jan up to have a chance to sit for a while. Also on the scene was a forty-one-year-old journalist in a white suit, Tom Wolfe, covering the launch for Rolling Stone. He was inspired to go back to the beginning and write a book about the Mercury Seven, The Right Stuff.

After the launch, both wives returned home. Barbara Cernan was grateful this was the last mission, describing Apollo 17 like the final chapter in a good book. She was ready for it to be over. "I'm going to take the phone off the hook, take a bath, and go to bed," she told reporters.

As her nine-year-old daughter, Tracy, slept-she'd told the host of the Today show how her daddy promised to bring back "Moonbeams" for her-Barbara sat in the dark by the squawk box. On his previous Apollo 10 mission, a "dry run" for Apollo 11, Geno had radioed back to Houston that riding around the Moon was a piece of cake.

"It was definitely not a piece of cake for me," said Barbara. "If you think going to the Moon is hard, try staying at home."

She knew "a million things could go wrong" on Gene's final flight. One night when her house was filled with people, she had to escape-but to where? Taking a hot shower, Barbara felt her facade begin to melt away. The pressure was pounding in her ears, and she let out a terrifying scream (which she hoped no one heard). The red, white, and blue excitement that had been following the astronauts since the Mercury days had ballooned to intolerable proportions. It was simply getting to be too much to handle, like the Secret Service men Barbara had to be accompanied by because of the Black September threat.

No one in Togethersville knew what would come next. On the surface, things looked the same. The astronauts still pitched each other into swimming pools at neighborhood parties and still got the perks. All their cigars were courtesy of the American Cigar Inst.i.tute. Along with Mrs. Nixon, some lucky Apollo wives wore Lunar Module rubies gifted by Van Cleef & Arpels. And if NASA would just provide a few Moon rocks for polis.h.i.+ng to Corrigan's, a high-end Houston jewelry store, the gals were promised free one-carat "Moon Rings."

Some of the wives had already put their names on the waiting list for Pan Am's first commercial flight to the Moon, but now that wasn't going to happen. There would be no "orbital newspapers, updated every hour" per Arthur C. Clarke's dream; no Lunar Hilton, which Barron Hilton had proposed; no Lunar Disney; and no chain of A&W Root Beer stands that Pete Conrad and Jim Lovell had planned, half jokingly, to open on the Moon after we colonized.

A s.p.a.ce station called Skylab was soon to go up, as well as a "s.p.a.ce taxi," a kind of VW bus for astronauts, to be known as the s.p.a.ce shuttle. But with Nixon's budget cuts to NASA, the boys definitely weren't going to Mars, as they'd hoped to by the eighties or nineties. The s.p.a.ce Task Group had drawn up a man-to-Mars program that was making the rounds in Was.h.i.+ngton, courtesy of Vice President Spiro Agnew, but at $78 billion, it wasn't likely to happen. The wives weren't too upset about that one. It would take a husband two years to go to the red planet and back.

The meetings of the A.W.C. diminished in size, the monthly get-together no longer a haven for its members. The faces at the card tables overlooking the boat slips of the Lakewood Yacht Club's marina on Clear Lake were worn out and pinched. Louise Shepard still drove in for every meeting from Houston, but she could see the fatigue in Marge Slayton. Her girls were now scattered here and there like apples-some still crisp, some overripe, some positively rotten.

It had been a patriotic duty to keep one's marriage together in Togethersville, but Harriet's "First s.p.a.ce Divorce" had opened the floodgates. Until then, the men had thought they needed their wives if they wanted to leave the planet. The Susies had been a cancer to the A.W.C. First Donn's Susie. Then John Young, whom Betty Grissom had always kept a wary eye on, left Barbara for his Susy. Even Gordo married a Susie after he and Trudy split up for good. There were other names, too, which the gals would just as soon forget.

One day, a friend of Nineteen wife Gratia Lousma called to commiserate with her. She'd heard that Gratia and Jack, who was soon to go up in 1973 to the orbiting Skylab s.p.a.ce station, were getting divorced. Gratia was stunned. Unless Jack knew something that she didn't, she a.s.sured her friend, their marriage was rock solid.

Gratia was shaken to the core. Deciding she had to do something, she went to the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center to talk to Chris Kraft. She wondered if the formidable Kraft could engineer the saving of some marriages, or do anything to stop the domino effect of Astro-divorces. A visit to the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center was intimidating, but just as Gratia was steeling herself to knock on Kraft's office door, suddenly someone called her name. It was Dr. Terry McGuire. In spite of NASA's prejudices against psychiatrists, the agency had hired him as its psychologist for manned s.p.a.ceflight. Terry was involved in the interviewing process of picking new astronauts for Skylab and the upcoming s.p.a.ce shuttle program.

Gratia told him that she was coming to see Chris Kraft. It seemed everyone she knew was getting a divorce; she'd just about had it and decided she needed to talk to someone.

Dr. McGuire invited her to step into his office. He was all too willing to help the Astrowives sort out their problems. After all, he was trained for this sort of thing. Maybe a group therapy session?

Gratia thanked him very much for his time. She walked right out of the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center, having gotten cold feet about knocking on Kraft's door. She and Harriet Eisele did end up forming the Survival Group with Terry, which tried to address the wives' marital woes in a responsible manner. It was not officially sanctioned by NASA and met clandestinely in the wives' homes. So the soap-opera, roller-coaster life of being an astronaut wife continued.

"I was looking at the book Astronauts and Their Families just the other day," said Wally Schirra, who'd left the program after his Apollo 7 flight, "and I was really shocked how few of those guys were married to those women anymore." Out of the Mercury Seven, the New Nine, and the Fourteen s.p.a.ce families, only seven couples would stay together.

"Our marriage has only lasted so long because you were away half of the time," ribbed Jo.

Wally and Jo had traded their Timber Cove home for the fresh Rocky Mountain air of Colorado. They stuck together; so did Louise and Alan, and Annie and John. The Mercury wives had been through a lot together. Some were just now finding themselves. In 1971, Trudy Cooper finally became a Powder Puffer, flying in the Powder Puff Derby, sponsored by Virginia Slims. The cigarette's slogan, "You've Come a Long Way, Baby," was the theme of the year's race.

Two days before the fourth anniversary of Gus's death in the fire, January 27, 1971, Betty Grissom filed a lawsuit suing NASA's largest contractor, North American Rockwell, for $10 million for negligence in the building of Gus's Apollo 1 s.p.a.cecraft, breaking the code of silence among the s.p.a.ce widows. Producers from the Today show invited Betty to come to New York and appear on the show to talk about the lawsuit. Betty pleaded her case to America, and hoped that the other two Apollo 1 fire widows, Pat White and Martha Chaffee, might join her in her cause-but in the press they "declined" to jump aboard her lawsuit. Nevertheless, when Betty accepted an out-of-court settlement of $350,000, shared with her sons, Pat and Martha were given comparable settlements.

Hate mail flooded Betty's mailbox. "You said on the Today show that you have received no negative comments in regard to your lawsuit, well, you now have mine," wrote one crank from Chicago. Another suggested, "Go to Russia and stay!!" The wife of a North American employee wrote, "You are nothing more than a money-hungry, stupid, selfish female and I'm very glad I don't know you."

Luckily, Betty received other letters praising her efforts as a liberated woman taking on the establishment. Betty would never forget what Gus had once told her: "You know, you're really the astronaut in this family."

In the summer of 1969, Rene Carpenter, who had always been forthcoming with the press, told the Houston column Big City Beat that she had "no plans whatsoever for a divorce." She added, "It's obvious that Scott and I are separated."

After Sealab III, Scott resigned from being an aquanaut and treaded the waters of private enterprise with his manned underwater consulting firm, which had its offices on the West Coast. He met the twenty-something daughter of a famous Hollywood film producer, Hal Roach, who ran the "Lot of Fun" where they used to shoot Laurel and Hardy films.

In 1972, Rene was given her own television show. She was no longer married to Scott. She'd spent a decade in the limelight in the role of an astronaut wife, but over the years had found her own voice and convictions. Now she was unshakable. She paused a moment as she put on the huge rose-tinted gla.s.ses Gloria Steinem had made popular, then entered the TV studio of Everywoman, her feminist television talk show. Its mission was "to record the current revolution, to present women who are changing their lifestyles."

Along with hosting guests such as the Continental Airlines flight attendants who confessed how the slogan "We really move our tail for you" made them feel like prost.i.tutes, Rene attacked Barbie and unblus.h.i.+ngly displayed a collection of birth control devices to her audience, including a diaphragm. The camera zoomed in tight.

"This is the greatest moment on television," thought Rene.

She was devoted to women's empowerment, and remained unfazed when one of her influential Was.h.i.+ngton pals said, "That's the most disgusting thing I ever saw."

Epilogue

The Reunion

I think we look like Stepford Wives, don't you?" said Jane Dreyfus, formerly Jane Conrad, looking at an old photo. "Because we all tried to be so calm and so cool and everything, but we were a far cry from Stepford Wives."

"We lived through this amazing time. It's like people who've been s.h.i.+pwrecked together," said Clare Whitfield, the ex-wife of Rusty, the "hippie" astronaut. "They were like rock stars. It was sickening." All the same, it was absolutely thrilling.

"It was hard for them to come home," admitted Faye Stafford. "Who could ever compete with the Moon? I was lucky if I could come in second."

"I was in big-time denial," said another Astrowife. "Somebody else might be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around, but of course my husband wasn't."

"There were people there all the time, from sunup to sundown. I was always so grateful for that," said Susan Borman. She had finally gone through rehab for her alcoholism.

In 1991 the first reunion of the Astronaut Wives Club, now rechristened the Original Wives Club (and affectionately nicknamed the K-I-Ts for Keepers-In-Touch), met in Deer Valley, Utah. Two decades had pa.s.sed since the last mission to the Moon, enough time that the women were now ready to share many of the feelings and fears they couldn't during the missions. Many were now divorced, trying to make their own way in the world and support their kids. Some were suffering from financial hards.h.i.+p, others from broken hearts.

The wives had talked about a reunion for a long time, but actually pulling it off was not easy. In the mid-eighties, a reunion had been planned for the New Nine wives. A few months before, Pat White, Marilyn Lovell, and Susan Borman met for a girls' weekend down in Florida, where one of their husbands was on a business trip.

It had been many years since the three could simply walk across a lawn to share a cigarette, a cup of coffee, tears, and talk. They were up late into the night listening to Pat's heartbreaking confession. Ed's death in the Apollo 1 fire still haunted her after all these years. She'd remarried a Houston oil tyc.o.o.n, but she was depressed and had attempted suicide on more than one occasion. Marilyn and Susan did everything they could to comfort her, and made her promise she would reach out to them if she had even an inkling of those awful thoughts again. She was about to become a grandmother, and they imagined that would bring some new joy into her life. And there was the reunion of the New Nine wives to look forward to in only a few months' time.

The weekend before the reunion, Pat committed suicide. The news was devastating. They all believed her to be the final victim of the Apollo 1 fire.

Finally, in the fall of 1991, the astronaut wives, from all the different groups, met for the first big reunion since the end of the Apollo program. Their get-together in Deer Valley resembled a launch party from the "good old days"-an expression that was truer than not, though it still caused some eyes to roll. Back then, each wife was essentially in her own orbit, alone without a tether. None felt she could share her deepest feelings. As Marge Slayton once reflected, "You didn't talk about your personal life-everyone was happily married, everything was lovely."

"Those were the golden years. All the wives were thrilled, proud, and happy," said Joan Aldrin. On the Apollo 11 heroes' "Giant Step" world tour, traveling alongside the other Moon couples, Joan had watched as Buzz went deeper and deeper into a depression. Returning to Earth, her husband, who later inspired Disney's Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story (and MTV's original logo), felt that he no longer had structure in his life, with no one telling him what to do and no one sending him on a mission. He eventually crash-landed, having, in his words, "a good old American nervous breakdown." (Pat and Mike Collins's marriage is the only one of the Apollo 11 Moon landing crew that survived.)

For the reunion, Susan Borman and Jan Evans arrived with chili (made in Jan's kitchen and flown in for the occasion) and groceries a day ahead of everyone else, and helped prepare for the arrivals. Drinks were served in Gemini and Apollo gla.s.ses, the kind once procured at gas stations or knickknack shops at Cape Kennedy. They raised their gla.s.ses to being together, and to those no longer with them.

Annie Glenn, now a senator's wife, had not been able to make it. Still, all the wives were extremely proud of her. Annie had overcome her stutter. In 1973 an episode of the Today show had featured a clinic that offered a new approach. Annie saw it and signed herself in.