Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman (47 page)

Shepard’s idea was to set a new record, an endurance flight to leap far ahead of the Russians and impress the nation wit
h NASA’s ability to keep an astronaut in space for more than a day. Shepard knew it was blatant politicking, but it might be his last chance for a flight anytime soon. “You know, Mr. Webb, we could put this baby up there in just a matter of weeks. It’s all ready to go,” Shepard explained in Webb’s living room. “Just let me sit up there and see how long it will last. Get another record out of it.”

Webb listened but said no. He felt that Project Mercury had run its course. He was anxious to move on. Shepard then told Webb that he’d be seeing his friend the president in a few hours and he’d like to mention his idea for another Mercury flight. Well, Webb said, at least “tell him my side of the story, too.” Shepard agreed.

After a few drinks—Shepard called it “getting some of our taxpayers’ money back by drinking at the White House”—Shepard saw an opening to corner Kennedy and explain his plan. “Maybe two, maybe three days,” he said, adding that it would be one way of jumping ahead of the Russians. Kennedy listened, feigning interest—especially in the beat-the-Russians part.

In recent discussions with advisers Kennedy had revealed his all-out obsession with reaching the moon, even if it came at the expense of other space-related projects. A few months earlier the Russians had launched two spacecraft, two days apart, each carrying two cosmonauts, including the first woman in space. Then the two spacecraft pulled within a few miles of each other—an orbital rendezvous of sorts, a maneuver at least three years away for the United States. The feat clearly gave the Russians the edge. Kennedy, it turned out, had little interest in another puny Mercury fligh
t. His sole concern in the space race was now landing the first man on the moon. “I think everything that we do ought to really be tied to getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians,” Kennedy had told Jim Webb in a tense meeting at the White House.

Still, the president listened to Shepard’s pitch, finally asking, “What does Mr. Webb think?” Shepard had to confe
ss that Webb opposed the idea. Kennedy thought a few moments more, then said, “I think we’ll have to go along with Mr. Webb.” And that was it. The president thanked Shepard for his thoughts and walked away.

But there was a consolation prize for not getting another Mercury flight. Deke Slayton had become head of the astronaut office, and among his duties was selecting the flight crews. He had decided—with NASA’s blessing—that the best man to kick off Project Gemini was the same man who had kicked off Project Mercury.

In late 1963 Shepard was chosen to command the first Gemini flight, paired with Tom Stafford, who had established himself as one of the leaders of the Next Nine. Their mission, following two unmanned Gemini launches, would be a five-hour flight designed to test the maneuverability of the newer, larger, more sophisticated Gemini capsule. The flight would focus on having the astronauts use the control system to alter the orbit of their capsule—from, say, 100 miles above earth to 140 miles—which would become a crucial part of all future flights. Plans for Project Apollo—still on the drawing
board, and often hotly debated—included launching two separate capsules atop a rocket, separating them, and then docking them back together while they orbited the earth, just as the Russians had done. Project Gemini would be a series of warm-up sessions for such tricky maneuvers.

For Shepard, one benefit of being chosen for the first Gemini flight was that it set a precedent and put him—theoretically, at least—in line for the first Apollo flight as well. Furthermore, he was nicely poised for a shot at the moon. NASA had begun indicating a preference to have the crew of the first lunar landing include one of the Mercury Seven, which had now dwindled to four men. Glenn had retired to pursue politics, Slayton was sidelined with a heart murmur, and in 1964 Carpenter
broke his arm in a motorcycle accident and was taken off the flight rotation (he would retire in 1967). With that possibility deep in the back of his mind, Shepard threw himself into Gemini training, which included many hours crammed into a training capsule. Shepard loved the two-seater Gemini capsule, which looked and felt like a snug little sports car. He and Stafford—a Naval Academy graduate who had transferred to the Air Force—hit it off well. But not so well that Shepard trusted his new partner with his little secret.

Shepard had been trying—as all Christian Scientists do—to take care of his dizzy spells by himself. But he finally began visiting a private doctor, who prescribed medication (such as diuretics) and vitamins (such as niacin) that he hoped would do the trick. Meanwhile, for Project Apollo, NASA needed more astronauts, and by late 1963 another group of Max Pecks faced Shepard’s glaring eyes in the interview room at Houston’s Rice Hotel. Many of the candidates assumed that Shepard’s sole job on the committee was to be the bulldog, to ask the difficult questions and in so doing to weed
out the weak.

Despite the intense efforts of Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, the next group would not include an African-American or a female astronaut, even though the Russians had already launched a woman into space. NASA officials still valued scientific considerations above any social statements they might make. So for now Shepard’s colleagues would continue to be all white, all male, and mostly military—just as they had been for twenty years. They were men who had watched on TV in 1961 more than two years earlier as Alan Shepard rose from the launch pad, thinking,
What a lucky son of a bitch.

Fourteen new astronauts were chosen that fall of 1963, and as with the Next Nine, most were destined for lengthy, complicated space flights that would make Shepard’s
Freedom
7
look like a high school science project. Just like the Next Nine, the only men among the next fourteen who would not shame Shepard’s space resume would die horrific deaths.

As the astronaut ranks grew, a hierarchical law emerged: You weren’t an astronaut until you flew in space. Until then you were just a “candidate.” So while Shepard was technically a legit astronaut, his competitor-peers sometimes reminded him that he’d flown the shortest space flight in history. Slayton once joked that the only astronaut to fly less than Shepard was Slayton, who remained grounded by his heart murmur.

Despite Shepard’s limited space time, many of the new astronauts respected him, even feared him. The twenty-two new guys were competitive, headstrong men but not above aspiring to mimic a hero such as Shepard. Some bought Corvettes. Some dressed like Shepard or wore their hair like him. In their eyes, he was everything an astronaut was supposed to be. He didn’t have to try hard; he just oozed style and sophistication. One astronaut called it his “oh-so-cool number-one leader shtick,” and said Shepard “epitomized cool—the sixties-style ‘swinger’ then coming into vogue.”

As NASA continued to build its new headquarters south of Houston, beside Clear Lake (which was neither clear nor a lake), most of the astronaut families settled ten miles further south in a small Quaker-founded village called Friendswood. Texas had welcomed NASA with wide-open arms. A housing developer offered astronauts and their families free homes in his development. Car dealers tripped over each other to sell cars to the astronauts at low interest rates. The Chamber of Commerce held a welcoming parade. Bankers shook their hands. Everyone wanted a piece.

Many of the families built new homes in the east Texas soil known as “gumbo,” a mix of mud, clay, sand, and crushed oyster shells. But neither Louise nor Alan had a taste for the muddy, swampy bayfront communities south of Houston, with their cement-hard beaches and brown, frothy waters
. Louise preferred the shops, nice restaurants, and rough-edged sophistication of Houston to the astro club down in Friendswood. So they settled in a high-rise luxury apartment building downtown.

It was not an easy transition for Louise. She had grown to love Virginia Beach. And after her distasteful sojourn in Corpus Christi sixteen years earlier, she had vowed never to return to Texas, to its dusty flatness, its punishing heat, and its hard-edged mien. Yet despite her initial concerns she and Alan would settle nicely into Houston’s society, more deeply than any other place they’d lived. It would become their home for the next three decades. But in 1963 the life of an astro-wife was never as simple as Louise would have liked, and she often couldn’t help being pulled into the vort
ex of Alan’s celebrity.

Louise’s handful of selected friends included Carol and Peter Vanderhoef. Peter was a Christian Science teacher and practitioner (similar to a priest, but responsible for the spiritual and physical health of church members), and the Vanderhoefs had two daughters close in age to the younger two Shepard girls. Alan and Louise sometimes left the girls with the Vanderhoefs overnight when they’d travel, and Peter Vanderhoef used to laugh watching Alan pull up with his three daughters—this famous test pilot and astronaut carrying an armload of dolls, tea sets, and dresses.

The Vanderhoefs lived in an upscale section of Houston known as River Oaks, and the backyard of their lengthy rancher adjoined the backyard of George and Barbara Bush. Peter Vanderhoef, who was raised in Connecticut, had once dated Barbara, who grew up in nearby Rye, New York, and he was surprised to discover she was now his neighbor. At the time, in the mid-1960s, George was a successful oilman and aspiring politician—he would lose a run for the Senate in 1964 but win a U.S. congressional seat two years later.

The Bushes had a trampoline in their backyard, and the Vanderhoefs often saw the heads of Bush kids—George, Jeb, and Neil—bouncing in the air above the fence
separating the two yards. The Bush boys teased and flirted with the Vanderhoef and Shepard girls. When the Shepards had moved to town, George, the eldest, hosted a party for Laura Shepard, to introduce her to other Houston teens.

Befriending the Bushes would be the first of many tactical steps Shepard would take toward positioning himself alongside Houston’s business, political, and social elite—a step toward life after NASA. Quite often, however, he wouldn’t have to take such steps—others sought him out.

Among Peter Vanderhoef’s list of famous friends was Ginger Rogers, a devout Christian Scientist. When the actress learned that Peter was friends with Shepard, she insisted he host a dinner party so that she could meet the heroic astronaut. Vanderhoef was also friends with actor Gordon MacRae, a former classmate of his. MacRae also wanted to meet the Shepards—it always intrigued Vanderhoef how celebrities wanted to meet other celebrities. A dinner party was scheduled, but history would intervene. President Kennedy was coming to town. It would be his final visit with the astronauts.

On November 18 Kennedy toured Cape Canaveral. Wearing dark sunglasses, he walked around the base of the new Saturn rocket, looking up in awe at the massive booster engine—the strongest ever built, and a predecessor to the one designed to reach the moon.

Then Kennedy flew to Houston to tour the burgeoning Manned Space Center. From there he traveled to a NASA medical facility in San Antonio, where he reminded America that it was still “a time for pathfinders and pioneers.” There he told the story of a group of boys walking across the Irish countryside who came to an orchard wall that seemed too high to climb. They tossed their hats over, forcing themselves to find a way to the other side. “This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it,” he said on November 21. “Whatever the difficul
ties, they will be overcome.”

The next morning, as he rode waving through the streets of Dallas, Kennedy was shot dead. Alan and Louise’s dinner with Gordon MacRae had been scheduled for that evening at the Vanderhoefs. But Alan called that afternoon to cancel. “They were too shook up,” Vanderhoef recalled. Shepard had always considered Kennedy a “space cadet,” a genuine fan of their feats, someone who was truly excited about what humankind had done and could do in space. He was shocked and devastated by Kennedy’s death—and more than a little worried.
What will this do to the space
program?
he thought.