Earthrise (5 page)

One day, some of my buddies and I had taken a trolley car to go into Pittsburgh to do some shopping. At the back of the trolley, there was a pretty girl with dark brown hair and a big smile standing with a few other girls. I managed to strike up a conversation with her and found out that her name was Louise Randall, and she was studying painting and design at Carnegie.

Louise and I started to have meals together at the Skibo cafeteria on campus, and before long we were dating. A few years later Louise and I got married on December 21, 1951, in her hometown of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania. We honeymooned in New York City.

The following spring we both attended our graduation ceremony; Louise earned a degree in art and I earned a degree in industrial management. It felt great to be getting on with my life, and being with Louise was wonderful. Planning out the next part of our lives came next. Grandpa Mitchell wasn’t feeling well, so it made sense for me to return to New Mexico to work in our Artesia farm machinery dealership and manage the Hagerman ranch. Louise and I said good-bye to our Carnegie friends and Louise’s family, and piled everything we owned into my green Ford coupe to drive cross-country to New Mexico. I wondered how Louise was going to like living in the Southwest because it was so different from the East Coast. But she seemed eager to go, and that made me happy.

The Zigzag Years

After I began my new work at the dealership and Hagerman ranch, we moved into one of my great aunt’s houses in Artesia. Louise had just started to decorate the home and make it our own when I got some surprising news that neither of us liked.

The Korean War was on, and I was about to be drafted into the war. I really didn’t want to be drafted, so I decided it would be best if I enlisted. And I knew that if I were going to be in the military, I wanted to fly. I immediately enlisted in the navy because the air force had more restrictions for married men at the time.

Enlisting in the navy became a key decision and turning point for my entire career. It wasn’t what I was expecting to do with my life, but that’s what happened. Suddenly, our new “military life” set Louise and me on a tremendously hectic journey that zigzagged us to many different towns all across the United States for many years.

Our very first move was to San Diego, California, where I began basic training, also known as boot camp, at the Naval Training Center. Louise followed shortly thereafter and took a job in a restaurant waiting tables while living in a nearby motel. I was required to live on the military base, and it wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of fun with our separate accommodations. But it was nice to be in San Diego near the water, and on the weekends we’d often go to the ocean to swim and just relax on the beach.

After basic training, which lasted about six weeks, I was assigned to begin Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island. Louise and I loaded up the Ford coupe and headed east, across the country once again.

When we got to Newport, Louise and I were shocked when we realized we’d gone through nearly all our money. We were hungry, but I only had about 25 cents in my pocket. So, to tide us over, we split a hot dog and a cup of coffee. I then raced over to the OCS naval station to report to duty and pick up my first paycheck. Thankfully, we had enough money to go out for a nicer meal.

After less than six months in Rhode Island, I had become an ensign in the navy and Louise had become pregnant with our first child. It was 1953 and also time to move on again.

Our next destination was Pensacola, Florida. We packed up our trusty car and drove to Pennsylvania to visit Louise’s parents before jumping onto Interstate 95 and heading south to Florida. On the long, hot drive we’d roll down the windows and turn on the radio to listen to some of our favorite singers like Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald, and Elvis Presley, who were chart toppers at the time. It was fun looking out the window because the South had a distinct look compared to other places I’d lived. We passed by many fragrant orange and grapefruit groves, and I’ll never forget seeing the strange-looking Spanish moss hanging from some of the trees.

Once we arrived in Pensacola, we wound up renting a house near the naval base. But homes weren’t easy to come by because there were a lot of young military couples looking to rent.

Louise and I realized that if we wanted to find a home, we needed to beat the crowd. The two of us would wake up early and drive to the local newspaper office to get the papers that were hot off the press so we could check out the newest homes advertised in the classifieds. The idea worked. One morning we found an address we both liked and parked our car in front of the place until it was a respectable hour to knock on the door. We talked with the owners and eventually got the home.

Later that year, our first daughter, Karlyn, was born. As Louise stayed home and was busy taking care of Karlyn, I was at the base, busy learning how to fly the North American AT-6/SNJ Texan, which was the navy’s basic aircraft trainer. But we weren’t in Florida very long.

After learning to fly the AT-6, I was then required to have more advanced flight training. So, once again, we packed up and moved our small family to yet another location. This time it was to the Hutchinson Naval Air Station in Hutchinson, Kansas, where I learned how to fly P2V Maritime patrol planes like the “Neptune.”

In just a short time, my life had changed dramatically from studying at Carnegie and working on our ranches. I’d prepared to be a naval officer and a skilled navy pilot, and I’d moved my family from California to Rhode Island, and from Florida to Kansas.

Our next move was to the Pacific Northwest, where I was finally stationed at the naval air station on foggy but lush Whidbey Island in Washington State. This is where Louise and I bought our first home, and we had happy visions of settling down.

And then it was time to go to war.

Risky Pacific Skies

My first navy deployment was to the island of Okinawa, Japan, for a six-month tour of duty with a patrol squadron. I was only 24 at the time and it was a big, big change. Even though I’d visited the San Francisco World’s Fair when I was nine, toured Washington, DC, with my grandmother when I was a teen, and lived in nearly 10 towns across the United States throughout my life, Japan was a very different environment and it took time to adjust. I was overseas in a foreign land where I didn’t speak the language, and I felt like I was a million miles away from home. I tried to stay connected with Louise and Karlyn through letters and international phone calls, but I missed them a great deal.

As a naval aviator, my duties were to fly the P2V Neptune with a four-man crew (pilot, copilot, crew chief, and gunner) to patrol the Pacific along the coastal waters of Japan, China, and Korea. It was an extremely tense, risky time, and I quickly discovered how dangerous and deadly war could be.

I came close to losing my life on the last day of a six-month tour of duty when I was getting ready to fly home to be with my family. I was flying on routine night duty, patrolling the waters and watching the ships going in and out around the straits near Shanghai, China. Suddenly my radar showed two attack jets rapidly approaching. Without a second thought, I immediately and instinctively thrust my controls forward, sending my plane into a sharp nosedive. It was lucky I did this because I watched incandescent tracer bullets from one of the attack jets whiz right over me!

After I got back to the base, I had to describe what happened during the attack. First I had to write a full report about the attack, and then I was interrogated by management, who asked me about all the details. I was so exhausted after all of this that I crawled into one of our airplanes that was heading home and immediately fell asleep.

But the good news was that I was finally flying home.

From Prop Planes to Jets

After I got back to Whidbey Island and was looking forward to a bit of downtime with Louise and Karlyn, we were immediately transferred to San Diego.

I was now assigned to carrier duty to fly faster A-3 Sky-warrior jets that took off and landed from enormous aircraft carriers. The ships were huge floating airbases where there wasn’t much room for error; a pilot had to have a good sense of judgment and skill to get the plane on and off the water-based runway fast and accurately. But flying jets was thrilling. I was always drawn to the cutting edge of flight technology, and jets were a new kind of speedier aircraft that was very exciting to fly.

While living in San Diego, I flew for three years in the Pacific during the Korean conflict and the Cold War, and I had two deployments to the Pacific waters near Japan. The first deployment was on the USS
Bonhomme Richard
aircraft carrier, and the second was on the USS
Ticonderoga
aircraft carrier.

Over time the navy realized I was a highly skilled pilot, so I was assigned to test pilot duty, which was something entirely new. This new assignment meant moving my family yet again to a place in California called China Lake.

China Lake was a very isolated and barren town near the Mojave Desert. Here, my duties were to figure out how to fly planes to drop bombs below enemy radar and then speed away.

And then in the fall of 1957, when I was 27 years old, something changed my life for good. I was returning to the States from being overseas and I heard about something extraordinary that happened in the skies above Earth.

And it was shocking news.

NASA Here We Come

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”

—William Shakespeare

O
n October 4, 1957, I was aboard the USS
Ticonderoga
aircraft carrier and traveling home from my latest assignment in the Pacific. I was en route to our newest home in China Lake, and I’m sure Louise and Karlyn were eagerly awaiting my return. But like so many people around the world on this day, I had the radio turned on and my attention turned toward the heavens. The announcer sounded intense as he reported that the Russians had just launched
Sputnik 1,
the very first man-made satellite, into Earth’s orbit.

The news about
Sputnik
spread rapidly and shocked a lot of people, including me, because the Russians had kept information about the spacecraft top secret until the day of the launch. I wanted to know all about this round, mysterious craft. In Russian, the word
Sputnik
means “fellow traveler of the Earth.” The satellite was a round metallic object about twice the size of a basketball. It weighed 184 pounds, traveled about 18,000 miles per hour, and was located about 139 miles above Earth at its closest point.

The launch of
Sputnik
was a huge world event and immediately covered by the media. The
New York Times
headline read:
SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE; IT IS CIRCULING THE GLOBE AT
18,000 M
PH.; SPHERE TRACKED IN
4 C
ROSSINGS OVER US.

The Russians then launched a second
Sputnik
one month later on November 3, 1957. This satellite was bigger than
Sputnik 1
and had a dog aboard named Pupnik Laika. The dog was an even-tempered little terrier and the first living creature to travel in “outer” space. I couldn’t help but think about my childhood terrier, Oscar. Unfortunately, Laika died within hours of
Sputnik 2’s
launch.

I suddenly realized that outer space was a new frontier for human exploration, and I just knew that human beings would follow right behind robotic satellites and animals in space. There’s no other way to say it—
Sputnik
changed my life. I wanted to be a part of this exciting new field, and I was absolutely sure that I wanted to be a space explorer. But in order to do this I also realized I needed to go back to college and get more education.

My mind was bursting with ideas, and I couldn’t wait to tell Louise all about them. I’d also been thinking a lot about being in the military. When I was a boy, I thought that war and fighting were natural things humans did for the greater good. But after facing near-death situations and seeing so much death and destruction, I became turned off to war. I wanted to use my skills as a pilot in nonviolent ways. I realized that becoming an astronaut would launch me in a whole new direction on a whole new peaceful path.