Magnificent Desolation (16 page)

Back at Wilford Hall, I had given no indication that I might also be concerned about alcoholism, and nobody suggested at the time that I had such a problem. In fact, I kept a bottle of Scotch with me in my duffel bag. Occasionally the colonel came around to visit, and almost instinctively I hid the bottle when I saw him.

Monday morning I began working with Dr. Sparks, attempting to verbalize what I was feeling. For those who know me now, it might be hard to imagine Buzz Aldrin as speechless, but expressing those deep, innermost thoughts, fears, and feelings did not come easily to me. Dr. Sparks sat at his desk, asking questions, making notes, and listening intently. I sat opposite him in a large, comfortable, padded green chair, rather than on the stereotypical psychiatrist’s couch. For the first few days we met in the mornings and afternoons, then, after two weeks, we had sessions only in the mornings. Early on, the doctors fed me a steady diet of antidepressants, and combined with the Scotch I managed to have brought in to me by a cooperative nurse, my tongue loosened.

Dr. Sparks and I reviewed every aspect of my life, from early childhood to the present. We talked a lot about my father, his influence in my life, and his lofty expectations of me. Over the years my dad had developed a reputation as being an overbearing tyrant in my life. That simply was not the case, and I attempted to explain as much to Dr. Sparks. My dad was a military man, and yes, he did have high expectations for me. Moreover, he was not good at giving praise and encouragement. But he did not rule me with an iron fist. For instance, he had wanted me to attend the Naval Academy; instead I’d attended West Point. My father had wanted me to fly bombers stateside as part of our national air defense; I had opted for a tour of duty as a fighter pilot in
Korea. Nor was my father intent on my becoming an astronaut, but I chose my own way once again. My father’s opinion of what I ought to be doing with my life was not always in sync with my own, but I believe he was nonetheless supportive. Like many parents, my father may have tried to live vicariously through me, hoping to see his own dreams fulfilled through his son, but to this day I am convinced he wanted only the best for me. He never quite understood that what I needed most was his smile of approval. Even years later, when I legally changed my name from Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. to Buzz Aldrin, it was not an affront to my father. It was more a matter of convenience, since I’d been known as “Buzz” from childhood.

Over the days and weeks that Dr. Sparks and I talked, we probed my deepest fears, fears so strong that I had never mentioned them to anyone. I told him about my maternal grandfather, a military chaplain, who, after a long period of melancholy, chose to end his life by putting a gun to his mouth. I told him about my mother, Marion Moon Aldrin, who in the last years of her life had been morose and unhappy most of the time, except when her grandchildren visited during family gatherings. My mother once took too many sleeping pills, and my father had to rush her to the hospital. We all pretended that her overdosing was accidental, but I think we knew that wasn’t the case. In May 1968, Mother’s second attempt at an overdose proved fatal. Even then, my family and I preferred living in denial and never openly spoke of how she had died. We asked the coroner to list her cause of death as cardiac arrest, and the coroner graciously complied. Part of what I revealed to the doctor was information passed on to me from my oldest sister, who told me that our mother had great difficulty dealing with the fame that came along with my successful 1966 Gemini 12 space mission. When I returned to my hometown for a celebration, the enormous attention heaped on my family made my mother extremely uncomfortable. To conceal her feelings, she wore dark glasses in public, including at our Gemini 12 “welcome home” event, held during the evening. My sister confided that our mother did not think she could handle the acclaim that was sure to accompany a son who had landed on the moon. She
took her life instead, and I carried that extra burden of responsibility in my heart and mind.

Coming to grips with the truth about my mother’s death brought me to the crux of my concern: My grandfather had committed suicide; my mother had committed suicide. Several close relatives in our family had ended their own lives. I looked at Dr. Sparks imploringly. “Am I next?”

Dr. Sparks couldn’t say. “Do you think you are suicidal now?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“How can you tell?”

“I couldn’t possibly kill myself because I couldn’t possibly make up my mind how to do it!”

Dr. Sparks and I both laughed. We became friends that day, and the doctor promised to delve into my concerns about inherited suicidal tendencies or other predispositions toward suicidal behavior.

I
SPENT NEARLY
four weeks at Wilford Hall. Meanwhile, back at Edwards, General White covered for me, and Ted Twinting kept the program flying right on schedule. Few people, if any, thought it unusual that I was away from the base for so long. They assumed that I was on some important business, and I was.

The doctors at Wilford Hall used a combination of psychiatric therapy, relaxation techniques, and strong medication to get me back on an even keel. It seemed more and more obvious to all of us that my life prior to Apollo 11 had been highly structured and goal-oriented, from growing up in a military family to attending West Point, to becoming a fighter pilot, to earning my doctorate at MIT, to joining the astronaut program. I’d always had recognizable goals, and for the most part I had attained them. Although I had not grown up with the dream of going to the moon, when that became a goal of mine (and of America’s) in the mid-sixties, I did it. Afterwards no other objective compared. Now, I was struggling to find a reason big enough to get me going again.

I contemplated leaving the Air Force and writing my autobiography. Other people who were not nearly as well known to the public as I was had written their stories, and there was still a fascination with our trip to the moon. Surely somebody would want to publish that story. Maybe writing the book might prove to be cathartic, freeing me from the past. More than anything, I wanted to begin life all over again— even if that meant leaving NASA, the Air Force, and my marriage.

O
NE MORNING
I walked into Dr. Sparks’s office and told him that I had come to some conclusions. I wanted to start afresh; I planned to leave the Air Force, leave Joan, and marry Marianne. Dr. Sparks listened thoughtfully and then responded calmly, “I think you are making a mistake.”

The doctor’s advice notwithstanding, I called Marianne that night and told her of my decisions. I expected Marianne to be thrilled; instead, she was noncommittal; then, after a while, she admitted that she was close to marrying the man who had been pursuing her. Once again I practically begged her to wait, and she reluctantly agreed.

As Thanksgiving approached, I felt a strong desire to go home. Dr. Sparks was quick to remind me that just days ago, I’d been determined to divorce Joan. Nevertheless, he granted a ten-day pass, after which I was to return to the hospital for a complete analysis of how things had gone. “In the meantime,” Dr. Sparks stressed, “if anything goes wrong, I want you to return immediately.” I informed him that I planned to spend some time with my family and contact my father. I conveniently didn’t mention Marianne.

My family welcomed me home enthusiastically, albeit somewhat awkwardly. Jan and Andy especially didn’t seem to know how to take me. Was it safe to be loud around me? Was it okay to play the radio or turn on the television? Did I want to be around them? They didn’t know, and I did little to reassure them. Our oldest son, Mike, seemed more aloof than usual, and Joan later told me that when she could bear the burden no longer by herself, she had acquiesced and informed
Mike of the real reason for my hospitalization. Mike had stood by her valiantly during the weeks I had been gone, and he seemed somewhat reluctant to give up his position as Joan’s protector now that I was home.

Joan herself knew little of my progress. Her only contact with me had been by telephone, and my reports to her had vacillated with my moods. She tried desperately to maintain a sense of normalcy as we celebrated a traditional Thanksgiving, complete with a robust turkey dinner. Afterwards, I suggested to Joan that she and I go to Acapulco during the week after Christmas, without the kids, just the two of us. Joan no doubt thought that I intended to enjoy some time together to begin rebuilding our marriage. In fact, I planned to ask her for a divorce.

Feeling good about my renewal, I even went in to my office and began weeding through the piles of work and mail that had accumulated over the last month. I was encouraged that I did not feel overwhelmed by it all. I felt confident that when I returned, I could step right into the role of leading the test pilot school until my retirement, for which I was eligible as of June 1972, having completed twenty-one years of service in the Air Force. I hadn’t really thought much about life after retirement, but now it seemed that was all I was thinking about. The process of treatment for my mental state forced me to reevaluate how I wanted to live my life.

I stayed with Joan and the kids for five days before heading to New Jersey to visit my father. Dad and I talked for two days, and although we didn’t always see eye to eye, at least we were communicating. When I told him that I intended to retire from the Air Force, he disagreed adamantly, suggesting that I stay in the service until I became a general. I said no way.

“Well, what are you going to do when you retire?” he asked. “You have three children to put through college, you know. How are you going to make a living?”

“I’m going into business for myself,” I heard myself saying, although I had no idea how I was going to bring those words to fruition. “Surely I have some knowledge and experience that will be valuable to somebody,
maybe an aerospace company. I have some other ideas in mind— and I might even write a book.”

My father remained unimpressed.

The following day, my sisters arrived, Madeline from Philadelphia and Fay Ann from Cincinnati. I took a deep breath, and in a rush I informed them that I was leaving the Air Force, divorcing Joan, and planning to remarry as soon as possible. My father and sisters stared at me in sadness and disbelief. Then, almost as if the dam of emotions had suddenly burst, they began imploring me to wait. “Be certain, Buzz, that you are healthy before you make such difficult decisions.” But I did not intend to be deterred, and the more my loved ones insisted I wait, the louder and more indignant I grew. I retired to my room that night, convinced that I was finally in control of my own destiny.

My sisters and father, however, were so upset that when I awakened in the morning, my sisters had already departed, and my father had, too, leaving behind a note telling me to have a good time and be careful in New York. Basically he was saying, “Have a nice life.”

As fast as I could pack my belongings, I was on my way to New York to see Marianne. Or so I thought. When I arrived at her apartment, Marianne refused to see me. Her other suitor had asked for her hand in marriage, and they were already planning a February wedding. I headed back to San Antonio, my spirit crushed.

At the end of another week, Dr. Sparks somewhat reluctantly agreed that I could return to Edwards and go back to work. I had been at Wilford Hall a total of four weeks, plus my ten-day leave. My prognosis, however, was not certain. “You may never have another depression,” Dr. Sparks said. “Then again, you might, and you may need some form of treatment. There’s no way to be sure what will happen. All I can tell you is to avoid any buildup of conflict in your life as much as possible.”

From my perspective, I was convinced that I was well, that I had beaten the downward spiral of depression. Little did I realize that its relative—the decimating demon of alcoholism—was lurking in the shadows.

   7

I
RETURNED TO MY RESPONSIBILITIES AT THE
E
DWARDS
USAF Test Pilot School with new vigor and was happy to discover that many people did not even realize that I had been gone so long. That was in large part due to the outstanding management skills of Ted Twinting, my deputy officer. I had communicated with Ted by phone almost daily once I got into my medical routines at the hospital, and Ted kept the school right on schedule.

General Bob White, my commanding officer, welcomed me back somewhat uneasily. Known for being possessive of the lion’s share of attention, Bob was a handsome, dapper officer, a renowned test pilot in his own right, who had earned his astronaut wings flying the X-15 on suborbital flights, as Chuck Yeager and Neil Armstrong had done. He was a highly decorated officer and deserved the respect of his men. I had gotten off to a less than stellar start with Bob through no fault of my own or his.

Prior to my actual taking command of the test pilot school, I was welcomed to Lancaster, California, the community adjacent to Edwards, at a dinner hosted by the local chamber of commerce. Unwittingly, someone seated General White and his wife at a lower table, and Joan and me at a higher table. The subtle implication was that Buzz Aldrin was more important than General Bob White. Such
breaches of protocol just aren’t done in military circles, and more than a few people thought that perhaps the general might not have appreciated my being at Edwards as much as he let on. Not because he didn’t like me; in fact, Bob and I got along quite well. But my arrival created an imbalance in leadership since my celebrity was seen by some to supersede the general’s well-established position in the esteem of his troops.

John Blaha, a student in the test pilot school when I arrived, and who later became an instructor, recalled:

Nevertheless, at the banquet in Lancaster, General White presented me with an Air Force Legion of Merit award. The award was given for “exceptionally meritorious conduct” during my nearly eight years as an astronaut with NASA while assigned to the Air Force’s first Special Activities Squadron at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. General White told the crowd, “Colonel Aldrin’s leadership, diligence, and perseverance in mission planning and orbital rendezvous were contributions of major importance in the success of the Gemini and Apollo space programs.”

I appreciated the general’s kind accolades then, and I appreciated his willingness to help me get reacclimated at Edwards when I returned from four weeks in the hospital. Apart from my closest staff, thanks to General White and Ted Twinting, most of the instructional staff knew only that I had been away somewhere, but they were unaware why.

Going back home was tougher. Joan did her best to make everything
seem normal, but our conversations were stilted. We didn’t look each other in the eyes often. Our children slowly accepted that Dad had returned, and, after a few days of walking on eggshells, soon slipped back into their typical adolescent brother and sister banter.

I knew that Joan had been contemplating divorce; she had said so plainly during one of our initial conversations with Dr. Perry. I was conscious of my own ambivalence as well, and I had no clue how to ameliorate my troubled, convoluted emotions. As a sort of peace offering, I bought Joan an elegant blond mink coat. I wanted to placate some of the pain I had caused her in the past, as well as the pain I would no doubt inflict on her in the near future if I ended our marriage. The day after Christmas, Joan and I flew to Acapulco, where we were joined by Joan’s stepbrother and his wife. The first few days of the trip were relaxing, but on December 29, Joan’s and my seventeenth wedding anniversary, we all went to dinner together. As Joan raised her glass in a toast, she said, “Here’s to seventeen, Buzz.” Then, as the three of us lifted our glasses, Joan asked the question on everybody’s mind: “Will we see eighteen?”

Joan’s straightforward question took me by surprise. I looked at my raised glass, but said nothing. After a few awkward moments, I slowly put my glass back down on the table.

Joan burst into tears, and I’m not sure that I didn’t join her, along with the in-laws. She hastily got up and left the table. My stunned in-laws sat in silence as I finished my drink and went to our room. By the time I got there, it was obvious that Joan had not stopped weeping. “I’ve known something was wrong, Buzz,” she said softly. “I’ve known for a long time.”

I wanted to express to Joan that it wasn’t her fault, that I had been struggling to escape the quicksand that had been pulling me down for the past few years, and that even now I had no firm grasp on the present. Change in the future seemed to offer the only hope to me. “I can’t go on like this,” I said. We talked rather bluntly for the next several hours, and we both shed tears. Joan was a good woman and the mother of my children. She had been thrown into a world where neither of us
knew how to function, but she had tried to make the best of it. I certainly didn’t want to hurt her, but I told her honestly that I didn’t see us growing old together, either. She seemed resigned that we would divorce and begin life anew, apart from each other. We were adults; we could handle this.

When I awakened the next morning, Joan was already sitting out on the balcony in the bright morning sun, having a cup of coffee. I went out and joined her, and she made no move to go inside. We sat silently for a while before Joan looked at me and asked, “Where will you go, now that you are going to begin again, alone?”

I dropped the bombshell. “I hope to marry Marianne, even though she is engaged to someone else.”

Joan bristled. Then she lit into me. Who did I think I was, anyhow? Had I simply said I wanted a divorce, she probably could have handled that. These past years hadn’t been easy for her, either. But to think that I was dumping her for another woman? Oh no! She wasn’t going to roll over and play dead while I did that.

It would not be an amicable divorce. We went home together, walking around the same house but living on two different planets. Joan had asked that we not say anything to our children until we had a plan, but kids are smart; they know when Mom and Dad aren’t doing well. Our kids easily picked up the tension between us.

Meanwhile, I tried to get in touch with Marianne, to no avail. She refused to answer any of my calls. When I finally reached a mutual friend, I was told that Marianne was getting married the following day. I was flabbergasted.

When I told Joan, she didn’t gloat; it was just more sadness on top of sadness. Ironically, being jilted by Marianne somehow caused both Joan and me to reconsider our plans. Joan was a strong woman, and she handled things in her own way. We had nothing to lose and everything to gain by staying together. I was thinking more and more about retirement, so we decided to postpone any final decision on our marriage until after that.

In mid-January I flew to Washington, D.C., for a press conference
to announce my retirement from the Air Force. The day before my announcement, while at the Pentagon, I bumped into General George Brown, my boss’s boss, and thus mine as well. The general and I exchanged pleasantries, and then he floored me. “Colonel, did you know that your guys lost a plane at the test pilot school this morning?”

The look on my face told him that I had not yet heard. “And the pilot?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think he bailed out.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“The plane was an A-7, Colonel,” Brown said curtly, as he continued down the hall. I knew what that meant. It was one of our guys flying the subsonic A-7 jet. I called Ted Twinting as soon as I could find a phone. When Ted told me the name of the pilot who had lost the plane, I gulped hard. He was a student pilot who had a physical problem that made the safety of his flying questionable in my mind. Both Ted and I had expressed misgivings about his ability to fly, but his medical reports showed that he could handle it. While doing a lateral test, he had allowed the plane’s altitude to get too low, and he’d lost it. Fortunately, he escaped with only cuts and bruises, but the plane was demolished.

On Friday, January 14, 1972, I arrived at the Pentagon to make my retirement announcement. Dan Henkin, the officer in charge of the proceedings, caught my arm before we went out for the press conference. “Buzz, the general suggests that you don’t say anything about what you are going to be doing during your remaining months in the Air Force.”

That should have been a hint. I had intentionally planned my retirement announcement before promotions were announced, so that if I were not promoted to general, it would not seem as though my leaving was sour grapes. And if I was promoted, then it wouldn’t look as though I was an ingrate, just waiting for a pay raise before retiring at that level rather than as a colonel. But the more personal aspect of my announcement had to do with our children. Joan and I did not want to disrupt their lives in the middle of the school year, so while I had
planned to announce my retirement now, I wouldn’t stop working until about six months later, much as we had done when I left NASA.

With no time to mull over the ramifications of the general’s request, I simply made a brief statement to the press, and obeyed orders—or, in this case, suggestions. Immediately following the press conference, I headed back to California and went back to work.

Upon my return to Edwards, General Bob White implied to me that I might want to consider relinquishing command of the school during my remaining time before retirement. He didn’t overtly state that he thought I could soon be removed from my command, but that was the message I understood. I asserted that it was to all our benefit for me to stay on and finish some of the projects on which Ted and I had been working.

“I understand, Buzz,” General White replied. “But we need to be prepared for all the possibilities.”

The possibilities took care of themselves the following day, when, only four days after the A-7 crash at Edwards, another disaster struck. A T-33 advanced jet trainer carrying two pilots crashed just seconds after the pilots bailed out. The pilots walked away with only surface cuts and bruises. Bob White met me at the hospital with a knowing look. We both recognized that the handwriting was on the wall.

Indeed, when the Air Force investigators finished looking into the accidents, they deduced that the A-7 jet pilot had bailed out because he couldn’t recover from a spin due to a mechanical problem that the plane’s maintenance staff missed. The T-33 had been doing spins and spin recovery when the problem occurred. In both cases there weren’t enough supervisory personnel observing the spin tests of the aircraft. That laid the blame for the destruction of two expensive planes, and nearly the loss of three pilots’ lives, squarely on my shoulders.

Not surprisingly, when the new list of brigadier generals came out, my name was not on it. The lists had ostensibly been prepared in December, before the two crashes. In truth, my chances for promotion ended when I asked for psychiatric help, but I still had hoped that my
overall career might be considered. I had spent more than twenty years in service to my country. Even after returning from the hospital in San Antonio, I felt that my performance as commandant and my relationship with staff members had been extremely good.

In February 1972, four-star general George Brown came to visit Edwards. His visit wasn’t just a friendly stopover. The Air Force had sent down an edict stating that the school would no longer be known as the Aerospace Research Pilot School, since we would no longer be considered the primary training facility for potential U.S. astronauts. With the Apollo program winding down, the Air Force had decided to re-emphasize the traditional aspects of test pilot training, rather than astronaut instruction. Astronaut training was the one thing I knew about, and it provided a quasi-rationale for my being the commandant. Now that was gone, too.

General White called all of my young instructors to my office for a briefing so that General Brown from Washington, D.C., could explain the change to them. I stood along with the young officers listening to the general’s presentation, struggling to keep my jaw from dropping. The astronaut program had been in existence for ten years before I arrived at Edwards, but General Brown made it sound as though I were the one who had instituted it. I hadn’t created the program; I’d inherited it. Nevertheless, General Brown laid the responsibility for the dismantling of the program on my shoulders.

I accepted that, but the general’s attitude surprised me when he then took me to task personally. “Well, let me get this straight, Colonel Aldrin. Why do you call this place the Aerospace Research Pilot School? Don’t you think a better name would be the Air Force Test Pilot School?”