Magnificent Desolation (34 page)

A much more sticky situation arose, however, when I discovered that the Bermuda-based liquor company Bacardi-Martini was using the “visor shot” in its advertising campaign to promote Bacardi rum. In the print ad, a bottle of rum was shown splashing its contents onto the image of me standing on the moon, and as if to suggest that rum transforms everything to a party atmosphere, the lower half of my spacesuit had turned into a pair of swimmer’s legs in swim trunks and fins. It made a mockery of this iconic image. What’s more, I was just about to celebrate twenty years of sobriety at the time.

I had a new legal team in place thanks to Lois’s daughter, Lisa Cannon, who brought in entertainment litigation attorney Robert (Rob) C. O’Brien to help her handle my business affairs. It turned out that this
was Bacardi’s second attempt to use the visor shot in its campaigns. The first time, a few years earlier, Bacardi’s ad agency had claimed that since the photograph was in the public domain, they thought they could use it freely. When informed of my right of publicity in the photo, they agreed not to use it. Apparently the current advertising arm of the company was not aware of this prior agreement.

Rob O’Brien went to work, and the local media soon picked up on the case. When we both appeared on the nationally syndicated entertainment news program
Extra
, Rob told the viewers, “Whatever the legal merits of the case are, this is a terrible way to treat an American hero.” The show’s host then asked me how I felt about my image being used by an alcohol company.

“I don’t want to become Bacardi’s version of a Joe Camel,” I replied.

The case was settled successfully, and Bacardi even made a public statement: “By using a portion of the visor shot in the advertisements, Bacardi did not intend to cause the public to recognize Aldrin in the advertisements nor believe that Aldrin endorses, or has ever endorsed, Bacardi products…. Bacardi has a great amount of respect for Aldrin, is sympathetic to his concerns and, therefore, has apologized to him for publishing the advertisements.”

Because of the success of my cases, I was able to help out other astronauts in protecting their images. In one such instance, a toy company, Action Products, was using the photographs of
Apollo 12
commander Pete Conrad
and Apollo 15
lunar module pilot Jim Irwin, along with some of my photos, on the packaging of their Apollo spacecraft and rocket toy models. Since both Pete and Jim had passed away, their widows, Nancy Conrad and Mary Irwin, were trying to protect their rights. So Rob O’Brien represented all of us, and we proceeded on a united front. At one point, intimations were made in the settlement discussions that Action Products was willing to settle only with me and not with the others. But we stuck together, and after a ruling in our favor by the federal judge in the case, our efforts had a successful outcome. Actually, Action Products came around full circle, and Nancy
and I ended up settling the case for Mary, her, and me over dinner with the company’s president. Later I even licensed my image for the company’s handsome three-foot-tall model of the Saturn V rocket.

As a footnote to the Omega story, all of the astronauts were required by NASA to return their Speedmaster watches after their missions, which I did. The watches are housed in the vaults of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and several are on display at air and space museums around the country. All but one of the watches are accounted for. The Omega Speedmaster I wore on the moon has been missing ever since I entrusted it, along with other artifacts, to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to be packed and shipped to the Smithsonian. The box and artifacts made it, but not the watch. At least one person claims to have discovered the original watch on a California beach, and sued me and the U.S. government to obtain title to the watch. As part of the case, the experts at the Smithsonian examined the watch and compared it against the watches in their possession. Lisa, Rob, and I also participated in the procedure. Wearing white cotton gloves, I was able to hold my watch from Gemini 12 for the first time in 35 years, as that timepiece and others were compared against the purported Apollo 11 watch. I understand that the Smithsonian determined that the plaintiff’s watch was not one of the NASA watches, and the case was dismissed. People have told me that the Speedmaster I wore on the moon is the Holy Grail of watches for serious collectors, and I assume that the search for it will go on.

F
ORTUNATELY, MOST OF
my commercial endeavors were about building positive relationships, rather than chasing after infringements. And while I enjoyed all of these ventures and remained constantly on the lookout for more good opportunities, as we neared the thirtieth anniversary of the landing of
Apollo 11
, I seemed to get a second wind when it came to the development of viable options for civilian space travel. I was sixty-nine years of age, but I felt more energized than ever. Lois handled the business, while I poured myself into space projects.
“Buzz, you have found your niche,” she said with a laugh. “You work as if you are still on assignment for NASA, trying to develop better rockets, a better space station, and spaceships to take us to Mars.”

Lois was right; I was thrilled with life, and excited about the possibilities of promoting adventure space travel as a logical extension of the world’s $3.5-trillion tourist industry. I got even more fired up when I heard that a wealthy friend of mine was willing to put up whatever it might cost to become America’s first space tourist—even if that meant flying into orbit in a Russian spacecraft.

   19

O
N
S
ATURDAY
, A
PRIL
29, 2000, L
OIS
, L
ISA, AND
I
WERE
preparing for a trip to Hong Kong, where I was scheduled for two important speaking engagements, one keynote speech for the Pacific Asia Travel Association, and one presentation for a British company’s campaign to enhance computer education in China. Both of these engagements had been booked by the Harry Walker Agency, with whom we worked on high-end events.

We were scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to Hong Kong that very night. The evening before, Lois and I had joined a couple for dinner at The Grill in Beverly Hills, during which I broke off a front tooth in my lower jaw. It was more irritating than painful, but it definitely bothered me. Lois dropped me off at the dentist early Saturday morning, but the dentist could only perform a stopgap measure, and I would have to come back the following week. I was frustrated that the dentist could not adequately repair the tooth in time for the trip.

My son Andy stopped by later that afternoon to visit, and he and I talked space for a while. We reviewed some of the roadblocks that StarBooster was facing when it came to attracting the substantial investment needed to develop our rocket designs. Andy worked in the aerospace industry and was constantly trying to help me find a way to bring my ideas to fruition.

“I wish I could help you find the funds,” Andy said, “but Boeing has their own designs to get their new contracts from NASA. Everybody is trying to come up with the next big idea for the next generation of spacecraft after the space shuttle is retired.”

Andy seemed convinced that although the United States had led the world into space, NASA was dragging its heels when it came to space tourism, and the Russians were most likely going to start taking paying passengers into space. Many of those passengers would be Americans. I knew that Andy was right because a friend of ours, Dennis Tito, was already planning to travel into space on a Russian spacecraft.

Andy and I talked further about the latest rocket designs I had been working on with Hu Davis, a former NASA engineer, who now was my co-designer for the StarBooster family of rockets. In light of NASA’s decision to continue flying the shuttle for at least another twenty years, there was an opportunity for my StarBooster design team to submit a proposal to NASA for our reusable fly-back boosters, along with our designs for the StarCore heavy-lift reusable launcher, and the StarBird reusable orbiter. When Andy left, for some reason I became discouraged. I was glad that the Russians and, more recently, even the Chinese were pursing space exploration, but I just couldn’t comprehend why America had to allow the Russians and Chinese to leapfrog ahead of us in space travel when we had all the elements we needed to be clearly superior in technology. We just weren’t using them in the right combination. I knew that my StarBooster team had a design for a reusable rocket booster that could lead to airline-style tourism, while also taking care of future launch needs for NASA. But I couldn’t get NASA’s attention. The more I considered it, the more depressed I became, and thought,
Aw, what’s the use?
I went into our bedroom, turned on the television, and flopped down on the bed.

After a while, Lois came in, and when she saw me lying on the bed, just staring at the screen, she said, “Buzz, come on, we have to get ready to go to China. I need to get your suitcase packed. I have several nice suits here. Which would you like to wear for your speeches? Do you like the blue suit with the light blue shirt—”

“I’m not going,” I said, interrupting Lois’s wardrobe check.

“What? What do you mean, you aren’t going?”

“Just what I said, Lois. I’m not going to Hong Kong.”

“Buzz, you have to go to Hong Kong. You have two very important speeches to give.”

“I’m not going!”

Lois could tell by my demeanor that I was serious, but she kept trying to encourage me, to get me up and ready to go. “Buzz Aldrin, you
are
going on the plane tonight!”

“Lois, I’m not going,” I said emphatically. I got up and walked out of the bedroom, out into our living room, and kept right on going. I walked out of our condo without telling Lois where I was heading, and let the door slam behind me.

One of the reasons I didn’t tell Lois where I was going was that I didn’t know. I just knew I had to get out for some air. I pressed the elevator button, thinking at first that I would head down to the ground level and walk, but then, when the elevator door opened, I pressed the number for the top floor instead of going down. At the top floor, I went over to the fire-escape door, pushed it open, and climbed the stairs to the rooftop of our building. From the rooftop, ahead of me, I could see all the way to the Pacific Ocean, several miles away to the west, and to the east, the lights of downtown L.A.’s skyscrapers. Behind me, four lanes of busy Saturday afternoon traffic on Wilshire Boulevard whizzed by the condo tower. I walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. It was certainly a long drop to the street. Heights had never bothered me, so I simply stood along the edge and looked out at the sights below.

How long I stayed on that rooftop, I’m not really sure, but it must have been longer than I thought, because when I finally went downstairs, Lois’s daughter Lisa was there, and the women were in a tizzy. Apparently Lois had called Lisa when she realized that I was adamantly refusing to go to China, and Lisa had raced across town from Santa Monica, a good twenty-to thirty-minute drive. Both had
been frantically looking for me, in the lobby, in the exercise room, everywhere.

“Buzz, where have you been?” Lois implored. I could tell she had been worried about me.

“I was on the roof,” I replied.

“On the roof!” Lois and Lisa practically shouted in unison. Apparently my answer did nothing to allay the women’s concerns.

“Buzz, what were you doing on the roof?” Lois wanted to know.

“Getting some air.”

Lois was troubled by my going up on the roof, though she continued packing for the trip nonetheless, and I remained equally as determined. “I’m not going. I won’t go, not with my tooth like this,” I said. The tooth was a problem, but it was a lower tooth, so it didn’t really look bad, but it was a good, legitimate excuse. I went back into the bedroom and crawled in bed. The blue funk was back.

I told Lois and Lisa I just “couldn’t do it in my current state of mind.” I couldn’t control the way I was feeling. Lois knew, however, that this could be devastating to my reputation as a professional speaker. In all the years since I had met Lois, we had only canceled one previous high-end speaking engagement because of illness, and while everyone understands that cancellations by speakers, musicians, and other performers can always be a possibility, it is never a good thing when it happens, and it is always inconvenient for the sponsor and disappointing to the audience. Just as in the space program, the slogan “Failure is not an option” was well known, so in working with speakers’ bureaus, the adage could be adapted to “Cancellations are not an option.”

Lois and Lisa started scrambling. I knew that my refusal was a self-destructive act, and at that moment I didn’t care. I tended to give myself permission to do that which was not in my own best interests. But Lois refused to give up. She felt sure that I would get on that plane the next day, if I could just have a little time to mull things over. Lisa called the agency and explained that I had a problem with my tooth, and
asked if they could reschedule my speech from the first part of the event to the last part, to allow me enough time to get there. Because it was a three-day conference, and I was slated to open the conference, Lois suggested that my speech be switched with that of the closing speaker. The agency agreed to try to make such a change with the event sponsors.

Lisa went back home, and Lois scheduled another dentist appointment for me early Monday morning. But on Sunday she simply left me alone. She and Lisa went house-hunting, looking for a new home for Lisa. Lois didn’t call, she didn’t prepare any meals, she simply left, and stayed that night with Lisa.

When Lois and Lisa returned on Monday, Lisa gave me a handwritten letter she had penned to me over the weekend. “Please read this,” she asked. In the letter, Lisa expressed her heartfelt support of me, but also her honest concerns. Basically, her letter said, “Buzz, it is your choice; if you don’t want to be involved in this sort of activity, you don’t have to be. If you don’t wish to participate in speaking engagements and other events that give you an opportunity to promote your ideas, we don’t need to pursue this sort of business, and I can go find another job.” Lisa had been a rock musician and a successful entertainment law attorney before coming to work full-time for Lois and me, and had refocused her entire career to help me in all my commercial endeavors. In her own way, Lisa was making it clear that the choice was mine, that nobody was imposing the family business on me. Perhaps just knowing that my independence was not being squelched made my acquiescence to Lisa and Lois a little easier.

Lois changed our flight to China to Monday night. The sponsors had shifted my speech from the opening to the closing. But as a consequence, they couldn’t get the first-class tickets that they had originally arranged for us. We would fly business class all the way to China.

“We’ll be there with you and for you each step of the way,” Lois encouraged me.

“Okay, fine,” I answered. “But after the speeches, I’m not doing anything,
no sightseeing, no social events, nothing. I just want to relax in the hotel.”

“All right, that is okay.”

We boarded our flight to Hong Kong on Monday, May 1, and on Wednesday afternoon I fulfilled the first engagement, enjoying my time on stage, and speaking extemporaneously for most of my keynote. The audience and the sponsors seemed to love it, and gave me a great ovation. During the second engagement, I stayed closer to a more scripted presentation, and that event had a very successful outcome as well. We stayed a few extra days in China, flew to Beijing, and I actually conceded to do a bit of sightseeing, especially when our hosts arranged a private tour of the Forbidden City, where we viewed the inner sanctum of the City and entered the royal bedchambers that few other Americans have been privileged to see. That night our hosts treated us to an elegant dinner at the China Club. We were treated royally, and what could have been a disaster turned into a trip of a lifetime because of Lois’s absolute confidence in me, and her dogged determination to overcome any actions that might be self-destructive on my part.

One of the important realizations for both of us that came out of this experience was that I could rise up and perform in spite of feeling blue—and even be inspiring to others. I was beginning to realize that I could transform from a downward spiral to my usual energetic and productive self. Sure, such challenging moments may arise in the future. But the good news is that such occurrences have become rare, and have not interfered with my productivity. Lois and I have learned to recognize the symptoms of approaching depression, and we are committed to making sure that every day is a good day, no matter how external events affect our lives.

O
F ALL MY
endeavors, I am happiest when working on space projects—especially space tourism. I want everyone to enjoy the thrill
of space travel. That’s why I was very pleased when I learned that Dennis Tito, a former aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who had amassed his self-made fortune by applying his methodical approach to building an investment firm, was pushing hard to become the first American space tourist. The ticket was to be brokered by Space Adventures, Ltd., the premier space tourism agency to which I had coincidentally lent my name over the last several years as an advisory board member. The destination was the International Space Station. The only difficulty I had with the itinerary, in spite of my general support of international cooperation in space, was the mode of transportation. He would be hitching a ride on board the Soyuz spacecraft, at a cost of nearly $20 million. Dennis would have to go to Russia to make his American dream come true.