Falling to Earth (41 page)

I would sit in my living room at night, wide awake. It was quiet and peaceful, but my brain still went a mile a minute. So I grabbed some old coffee-stained legal pads and began to write down my vivid impressions of our flight. Unlike the technical debriefing, I relived the flight in emotions and remembered images. The words flowed freely and easily, and after letting them sit to one side for a while, I realized I had written something that might best be described as poetry.

I didn’t do anything with those papers for years. But when I mentioned them to some friends in a Houston poetry group, they grew excited about the first poems written by someone who had traveled to the moon. They said I should publish them. I left the poems in a drawer for a few more years, but eventually I did publish them, in a volume called
Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour
.

The poems are about as good as you might expect from a pilot. I hope I did a better job than a poet would if asked to fly a jet with no training. And on those long nights when I couldn’t sleep, the writing helped me. It was my own personal, emotional debriefing.

I went to the office every day and life seemed to return to normal. The debriefings only lasted a few weeks. Then it was time for NASA to send us on our next mission. This assignment would last for the rest of the year, and this time it was all about public relations. NASA needed to keep the tax dollars flowing. Sending us around the country, then around the world, allowed them to celebrate and show off their successes.

Our first stop, in early September, was Washington, D.C. Vice President Agnew decorated each of us with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award that NASA could bestow upon us. He was extremely friendly and made us feel very special. The next day, we headed to the Capitol building. From the podium where so many historic speeches had been given, we addressed a joint meeting of Congress, an unusual honor for an Apollo crew, given only to Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 before us. This experience certainly felt a little different from office work.

We were escorted into the chamber by a group of politicians including Congressman Chuck Chamberlain, who had helped me attend West Point all those years before, and Congressman Gerald Ford, also from Michigan. I’d cross paths with Ford again before too long, under very different circumstances.

Carl Albert, the Speaker of the House, introduced us in some of the most glowing words I could recall. “It is our great honor today to welcome to this chamber the recently returned heroes of Apollo 15’s epic journey into space,” he began. “I feel privileged to introduce to you three Americans who are such a credit to their country and who represent the highest qualities of human aspiration and courage.”

Oh shit, I thought to myself, how the hell do I give a speech to match that introduction?

I had a little time to think about it while Dave made his remarks. They were excellent, inspiring, and a tough act to follow. But then Dave mentioned “my trusted colleague, Colonel Al Worden.” It was my turn.

“First off, let me say I am overwhelmed by the reception. It is fantastic. I am proud to be an American. I am proud to be part of the Apollo 15 flight.”

So far, so good. Time for me to share a message of what I experienced in space, beginning with our launch.

“Our view out of the window was of an area surrounding Cape Kennedy and some of the ocean. After the launch the first thing we noticed, particularly when we got into Earth orbit, was that we had a further view—we were further away from the Earth, and our view was expanding. We did not see any area around Cape Kennedy. What we saw were continents and oceans, a great deal of the horizon. After we left Earth orbit, and for the remainder of our flight, our view was one of the Earth. Our horizons were not limited to the area around us during the flight. We saw the Earth as a single planet. There is a oneness about the Earth that we do not see from the ground. We do not see any boundaries from that particular vantage point. We do not see any differences in race, or religion, or political beliefs.

“The thought struck me that there was an analogy between the Earth and between
Endeavour
. We were a team of three living in a spacecraft called
Endeavour
. We are all billions of people living on spacecraft Earth. We had to work as a team to survive and to maintain our own household during the flight. We
must
work as a team to maintain our household and to maintain our home called Earth.

“One thing is quite evident—particularly during the flight—our destinies were bound together by what we did in the flight. We relied on each other; we worked with each other. The same thing must be true on Earth. We must work together. We must rely on each other. We must work together as a team for Earth.

“We had the very crude beginnings of some tools to help us accomplish this goal on our flight. We carried many scientific instruments—a very crude beginning, admittedly—to do the kinds of work that have to be done to clean up spacecraft Earth. We carried scientific instruments that measured remotely. We carried some cameras that took pictures for analysis. As I said, this is a very crude beginning, but it leads into the kinds of things that can be done in a small way to help clean up our spacecraft Earth.

“We cannot all go to the moon. The three of us were very fortunate to have gone. We sincerely hope that we can be your eyes and ears in providing the perspective of Earth that we had. Thank you.”

Jim added his remarks, and then the chamber rose and gave us a thunderous standing ovation. I felt I had given a good speech, not only a perspective on what my government needed to do, but also using the close teamwork of my crew as an example. That day, I couldn’t have felt closer to Dave and Jim while we shared in this extraordinary outpouring of praise.

President Nixon had called us while we were on the
Okinawa
and invited us to dinner at the White House. We were happy to accept. It was standard practice for invitees to bring their wives to dinner, too. Dave arrived with his wife, Lurton, and Jim brought Mary. I was single. It would have been fun to invite a date. After all, “Want to join me for dinner with the president?” was an unbeatable pickup line. But I doubt my NASA bosses would have liked that.

We all brought along our children, and the kids were taken upstairs for dinner. Before the evening was over, the president gave them a special tour. He was a great historian, steeped in the history of the White House. He took a real delight in taking the kids up to what looked like blank walls, and pointing out a near-invisible line in the paint. Then he’d push on the wall, and a secret bathroom would be revealed. Nixon laughed with pleasure as he entertained the children. He was just wonderful to them.

As I stand between Dave and Jim, my speech receives a standing ovation from Congress
.

Before we sat down to dinner, we stood with the president on the balcony that overlooked the South Lawn. As we looked at the city lights, Nixon told his butler to fetch his hundred-year-old scotch. The butler quietly reminded him that there was only a tiny amount left. The president didn’t care—it was an appropriate occasion to finish it, he declared. So we gazed at the skyline and raised our glasses in a toast.

It is strange to think now, but all five of the men who sat down to dinner that night—the president, the vice president, and the Apollo 15 crew—were marked for a dramatic fall from grace. At the time, all of us were riding high: Nixon and Agnew were on course to win a second term by a landslide the next year, and we were being honored by them with this special dinner.

If only we could have foreseen the catastrophes just around the corner for us all. Vice President Agnew was forced to resign because of criminal charges in 1973. Facing even weightier accusations, Nixon would resign the year after, the only American president ever to do so. The fate of our crew would be decided even sooner.

Although the seeds were irreversibly sown, this was still in our future. As an added honor, the president treated us to a weekend at his private mountain retreat, Camp David. After the grueling years of training, I enjoyed spending family time with Merrill and Alison, while watching Dave and Jim relax with their wives and kids. Mary and Lurton had seen precious little of their husbands in those busy and tense years, and now they could finally enjoy their company in beautiful and luxurious surroundings. I felt a momentary tinge of regret. I was at the pinnacle of my career, but my time around these happy families only reminded me of what I had sacrificed to get this far.

However, it was a time to enjoy, not to reflect. We visited New York for a motorcade through Manhattan with the mayor. We sat in an open-topped car and waved at the crowds, then met with the secretary-general of the United Nations. He presented each of us with the UN Peace Medal.

NASA never trained me in public speaking, but during our postflight itinerary, I grew to enjoy it. I didn’t have any particular axe to grind and just said what was on my mind, which is probably why I wasn’t bothered by giving speeches. I never used a script; I just tried to watch my audience and see what they responded to, changing pace if needed.

While in New York, we did a round of talk shows. The host of the
Today Show
back then was Hugh Downs, and he had a very funny sideman, the former baseball player Joe Garagiola. During our interview, Joe leaned in and said he understood that astronauts sometimes had differences of opinion in flight, but who had the last word?

Staying lighthearted in keeping with the show’s tone, I raised my hand. Dave shot me a funny look, but Joe laughed and asked me for my answer. I told Joe that the last word was always me saying “Yes, sir!” to Dave. It got a big laugh, and the show continued.

But Dave didn’t forget. In the relative privacy of a limousine on the way to our next engagement, he chewed me out for the entire ride. It wasn’t the only time during that long world tour that Dave and I clashed. He didn’t like me to say things that he hadn’t come up with or vetted. The mission was over, but he was still in charge, and he would make damn sure I remembered it. Jim, miserable, slunk back into his seat during these exchanges and didn’t say a word.

Chicago gives us a wonderful welcome as we parade through the streets
.

What could I do? Dave could make life hell for me back in Houston if he wanted. As my commander, people would listen to his opinions about me. So I gritted my teeth and, without letting it suck all the enjoyment out of the trips, tried to do as he ordered.

Fortunately, there was plenty to enjoy. We had a similarly humbling reception in Chicago, where Mayor Daley drove out to meet us at the airport then took us on a tour of the city. Chicago was—and is—very ethnically diverse, and Daley wanted us to visit every neighborhood. It seemed that every different group had their own cultural celebration that day. Now
this
was my kind of thing. I could party, eat, drink, and outdance them all. It wasn’t really Dave’s scene, but I loved it.

Then we were whisked to a large formal dinner with the mayor. I’d vaguely remembered that Bob Lawrence, the pilot I’d known from astronaut selection testing, was from Chicago. Barbara, his widow, still lived there, so I invited her to the gathering. It was only by chance that Bob had died in a plane crash four years earlier. He could have just as easily have been a NASA astronaut returning from a triumphant trip to the moon and fêted by adoring crowds. I enjoyed a long chat with Barbara that night, sharing my memories of her husband.

I also called Eddie Fisher that day. The popular singer had come by the astronaut office whenever he was in Houston, and we’d become sort of friendly. He invited us to his late show and saved a table for us. By the time we disentangled ourselves from the other celebrations and made it to his theater, we were an hour late for his show. We snuck in, hoping not to disturb a show we assumed was well under way.

But it wasn’t. Eddie had held the show until we arrived, then came over and sang at our table. It was the kind of star treatment we were not used to, and I doubted it would ever feel normal.