Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman (69 page)

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March 3, 1961, p. 30.

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(unpublished manuscript), NASA archives, 1967.

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n Shepard,” file number 62–106995, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Note: the FBI conducted an extensive background investigation on Shepard in 1971, at a time when he was under consideration for a presidential appointment. The results of that investigation, along with a 1967 background investigation by the Civil Service Commission—more than 400 pages in all—were obtained by the author through the FBI’s Fre
edom of Information and Privacy Acts.)

As a boy in New Hampshire, Shepard had what his mother called “boundless energy”- so much so that his elementary school teachers advised that he skip ahead two grades, which ever after made him the youngest in his class. (Courtesy of the Shepard family)

Shepard (shown here on graduation day with father, Bart, and sister, Polly) claimed he “never really hit my stride” until his final year at the U.S. Naval Academy. (Courtesy of the Shepard family)

Shepard was relentless in his pursuit of the beautiful Louise Brewer, pictured here at his Ring Dance at the Naval Academy. (Courtesy of the U.S. Naval Academy).

Wedding day: March 3, 1945, during Shepard’s brief hiatus from serving aboard a destroyer in World War II. The marriage would not be a perfect one, but it—and their love for one another—would last more than fifty years.
(Courtesy of NASA)

More than anything, Shepard loved to fly. And, as one fellow test pilot said, “He could fly anything.” Left, at Muroc Airfield (later named Edwards Air Force Base) and, below, in a T-38 NASA jet.
(Courtesy of the Shepard
family and NASA)

Shepard took the illicit practice of “flat-hatting” (flying lower and faster than Navy rules allowed) to new lows; he once flew beneath a bridge, above a crowded beach, and over a parade field of Navy officers—and came dangerously close to a court martial. Above, in an F-106 Air Force jet.
(Courtesy of NASA)

The Shepard family—Alan, Louise, their two daughters, and the niece they raised as their own daughter—captured by
Life
magazine at home in Virginia Beach.
(Courtesy of the Shepard family)

The Mercury Seven during desert survival training in Nevada. From left: Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Shepard, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, and Deke Slayton.
(Courtesy of NASA)

Colleagues learned there were two sides to Shepard. One minute, he was an affable jokester; the next, bitterly competitive, to the point of being a “cutthroat”. Above left, goofing at a press conference; above right, after a jog at Cocoa Beach.(Courtesy of Ralph Morse/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)