Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman (70 page)

Opposite: Shepard once likened the intense competition among the Mercury Seven to “seven guys trying to fly the same airplane.”
(Courtesy of NASA)

One journalist called Cocoa Beach-its jazz clubs, dancs clubs, and its colorful, carnival-like”strip-”a harlot of a town.” Here, the Starlite Motel in 1959, which was run by Holocaust survivor and astronaut pal Henri Landwirth. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives).

Though he harbored a lifelong disdain for the press, he learned to hone his dealings with reporters, one of whom called him “the cool master of the press conference.” Above, flanked by NASA spokesman Colonel John A. “Shorty” Powers. (Courtesy of Paul Schuster/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Glenn was furious that Shepard had been chosen ahead of him for America’s first manned space launch; each man was like the other’s alter ego.
(Courtesy
of NASA)

Doctors probed every inch of Shepard’s thirty-seven-year-old body before the launch.
(Courtesy of NASA)

Shepard traveled higher and faster than any other American-”the Lindbergh of space,” one newspaper called him. Right, captured by his capsule’s onboard camera during his brief taste of weightlessness. (Courtesy of NASA)

Louise at home, nervously awaiting word that her husband was safe aboard the recovery ship.
(Courtesy
of Leonard McComb/
Time Life Pictures/
Getty Images)

Shepard being hoisted free of his capsule and into the recovery helicopter.
(Courtesy
of NASA)

“Boy, what a ride,” Shepard said, as the helicopter delivered him to the USS Lake
Champlain,
where a cheering crowd of sailors welcomed him back from space.
(Courtesy of NASA)

At Grand Bahama Island, Shepard spent three days out of public view, undergoing exhaustive postlaunch briefings and invasive medical exams. Doctors reported he was “in the best of shape, in the best of health, in the best of spirits.”
(Courtesy of NASA)

President Kennedy awarding Shepard the Distinguished Service Medal in the Rose Garden. (Courtesy of Joseph Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)