By Stuart Nulman
In December of 1972, while Barbara Cernan’s husband Eugene was in outer space as part of the Apollo 17 mission – the final mission to the moon — she commented on his remark while he was orbiting the moon three years earlier with Apollo 10, in which the job of being an astronaut was “a piece of cake”.
“It was definitely not a piece of cake for me,” she replied. “If you think going to the Moon is hard, try staying at home.”
From 1959 until 1972, the astronauts who made up the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions for NASA, were regarded by the American public – and manufactured by NASA and the media – as true all-American heroes. However, it was the astronauts’ wives that had one of the toughest jobs of all. They had to be the model of calm, coolness – and glamour – as their respective husbands were trying to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s mandate of landing a man on the moon by 1970, and yet face the daunting prospect of not safely returning to the Earth after a mission. And they had to do this while they were constantly in the public eye.
Basically, they were the ultimate trophy wives.
With the exception of the voluminous coverage from Life magazine and Tom Wolfe’s excellent 1979 best seller about the Mercury program “The Right Stuff”, not much has been written about what it was really like to be an astronaut’s wife during the height of the space race of the 1960s. Now their story can finally be told in Lily Koppel’s fascinating account “The Astronaut Wives Club”.
The book covers the 13-year period of the three significant NASA space programs, and how the wives had to stand by their men no matter what the cost was to them or their families. Although the club unofficially began during the Mercury program (it was officially established as the “Astronaut Wives Club” in 1966 in Houston by Deke Slayton’s wife Marge), the main argument that is emphasized by Koppel is that the club was more than just an excuse to have social outings and coffee klatches … it was established mainly as a support group, because only the astronaut wives could easily understand and empathize with each other on the joys and hazards of having their husbands dangerously explore such uncharted territory.
For most part, this was a tight knit group. Their support of each other through triumphs and tragedies was unwavering. First of all, they lived in close proximity to each other in a Houston suburb that was dubbed “Togethersville”. During every space mission, the wives virtually camped out in the astronauts’ homes from lift off to splashdown, looking after the wives in question’s needs, shielding them from hounding reporters (except for the embedded reporter from Life, who was given exclusive coverage) and giving them much needed moments of privacy, especially when they could hear the transmissions between the space capsule and mission control from the squawkbox that was provided to them by NASA. Probably the most painful part of being an astronaut’s wife was the agonizing times that they had to comfort one of their own when their husband was killed during a training session … and couldn’t break the news until a NASA representative arrived to officially inform them (which was the case during the tragic launch pad fire that took the lives of Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in 1967).
And with that came the tremendous emotional toll of playing the role of being the perfect, supportive wife to an adoring, worshipping public. They had to cope with their husbands’ long absences from their Houston homes to space flight training in Cape Canaveral, Florida, not to mention the constant partying, drinking and philandering that went on (which ultimately led to many marriage breakups). The astronaut wives privately took the brunt of their husbands’ fast public lives as astronauts. For example, Susan Borman (whose husband Frank Borman flew on the historic Apollo 8 mission) became an alcoholic; Pat White never fully recovered from her husband’s tragic death in 1967, and committed suicide in 1991; and Joan Aldrin personally witnessed her husband Buzz’s gradual descent into a nervous breakdown during the glory and adulation he was receiving after Apollo 11 returned to Earth.
Besides the ongoing support, the book also portrays the wives’ indomitable strength and spirit, and how, for many of them, were able to rise above being an astronaut’s wife and carve out their own lives and careers. Rene Carpenter (wife of Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter) became a widely read syndicated newspaper columnist and TV personality; and Marge Slayton became an active volunteer and confidante of Robert and Ethel Kennedy during his tragically short 1968 presidential campaign.
The reader also gets a never-before-seen look at the perks of being an astronaut’s wife, from the $100,000 insurance policy from Life magazine (which bought the exclusive rights to the Mercury Seven’s story for an unprecedented $500,000 in 1959, as well as the stories of the Gemini and Apollo astronauts for just as high an amount); there were the trips as NASA ambassadors across the U.S. and around the world; there were lavish gifts (not to mention shopping sprees at the exclusive Neiman-Marcus department store); encounters with U.S. presidents, First Ladies and international heads of state, as well as the best sports cars that were purchased for only $1 a year.
Koppel has done an exceptional job revealing this somewhat hidden aspect of the glory days of American space exploration, with thorough research and interviews with many of the surviving astronaut wives. It’s a perfect companion volume to “The Right Stuff” and proves that the wives were just as an integral part to the space race of the 1960s and the quest to land a man on the moon, and should be appreciated as much as their astronaut husbands, or the crew at the Manned Spacecraft Centre, who helped guide them to and from outer space.
Waiting for them to arrive safely home from the moon may not have been a piece of cake like Barbara Cernan said more than 40 years ago. But their faith and inner strength during those long waits, and how they gracefully handled it from lift off to splashdown, have made the astronaut wives the unsung heroines of the space race. And this book is their permanent living testimony.
This review originally appeared in the July 6, 2013 edition of the West End Times.
