"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today (5 page)

“Sure you can, Walt,” Alan assured him. “C’mon, I’ll help you get it started.”

The two men rushed across the parking lot, and Alan helped buckle Walt into his ’Vette. The Project Mercury director sat there, staring at all the knobs, buttons, switches, and instruments. “What the hell,” he mumbled, fussing with the unfamiliar controls.

“Here, Walt,” Alan said, reaching across and starting the vehicle.

“Thank you,” Walt said, closing the door.

Alan heard his ’Vette’s gears cry in agony as Walt jammed the stick in first and chugged away, stopping and starting and eventually getting the sports car to move at a somewhat s
teady pace.

Alan turned and ran into the launch pad’s office. As Walt was turning onto the main road, he phoned the cops. “This is astronaut Alan Shepard,” he shouted. “Some sonofabitch just stole my Corvette. He’s headed for the south gate.”

Walt chugged and jerked Alan’s ’Vette up to the Cape’s exit, and the guards pounced on the stoic man, lifting him from the car and spread-eagling him over the hood.

Alan was already on the phone with NASA security chief Charlie Buckley. “You better get to the south gate right now, Charlie,” he laughed. “They have the boss in handcuffs.”

T
hen, it was
the
day.

The seven astronauts doodled at their desks in their office at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. It was January 19, 1961. Tomorrow, John F. Kennedy would be sworn in as President of the United States. But right now Robert Gilruth was more important to the Mercury Seven. As chief of the Space Task Group, Gilruth ran Project Mer
cury. He owned the candy store. He was Walt Williams’s boss, and he would say who would be the
FIRST TO GO!
That had been the engine driving the Mercury Seven’s training, and that afternoon Gilruth had called the astronauts. “How about hanging in after quitting time, guys? I have something to tell you.”

Astronaut Alan Shepard atop the back of his beloved Corvette. (Barbree Collection).

There it was. He’d made his decision, and each of the seven reviewed where they stood in the program. There’d been an unquestioned breakthrough in mid-December when a Redstone carried an unmanned Mercury capsule through a perfect flight. That’s when Gilruth said oh so casually, “Everybody better start thinking about who goes first.”

Okay. Each astronaut voted for himself. Then Gilruth smiled and said, “I would like for you guys to take a peer vote. If you were unable to make the first flight, select the man you think should go.” He was aware of their discomfort and smiled. “Drop your choice by my office soon.”

The astronauts couldn’t determine whether Gilruth had really given them a vote or if he was playing it clever. Either way, the Mercury Seven
knew he could simply select the man he wanted, and the astronauts would never be the wiser.

The door opened. Gilruth came in and got right to the point: “What I have to say to you must stay with you. You can’t talk about it, not to anyone, not even to your wives. Now let’s keep it that way. Each of you has done an outstanding job. We’re grateful for your contributions, but you all know only one man can be first in space.

“What I’m about to tell you,” Gilruth continued, “is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. It is essential this decision be known to only a small group of people. We’ll make it known to the public at the appropriate time.”

He hesitated only to take a breath.

“Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital Redstone flight, Gus Grissom will follow Alan on the second suborbital flight, and John Glenn will be backup for both missions.”

Six hearts sunk as the seventh raced ahead with pride.

Alan Shepard understood the other guys’ disappointment, but they all knew from the beginning that one would go, six would watch.

John Glenn stepped forward and shook Shepard’s hand as the other five moved in and offered their congratulations before quietly leaving the room. Shepard knew this was a time to keep his feelings inside, but as he went through the door, he permitted himself one little click of his heels.

We reporters were kept in the dark, but within days I learned the selection committee had picked Shepard because he was judged to be the smartest. The committee selected Grissom because of his engineering skills and Glenn because he always brought his plane back no matter how badly it had been shot up.

None of this did me any good as a reporter, for I had received the information off the record. The other astronauts knew the smart guy would be in the seat for the unknown, the engineer would be there to analyze and fix any hardware during the second flight, and the third guy would push the envelope. If he pushed it too far and they got into trouble, well, somehow Glenn would bring the ship home.

They also knew that if Shepard’s flight came off as planned, then
all of them would have their turn. They had no fight with one another. Their struggle was to develop safe hardware and come home alive.

T
he Mercury Seven returned to Cape Canaveral on a mission to get rid of what the press was calling “AstroChimp.”

As a precaution, NASA had decided to send a chimpanzee into space first. The astronauts to a man thought the chimp was unnecessary.

“The only way for us to go,” Alan Shepard told the others, “is to stay in the faces of those making the decisions. They must understand the chimp isn’t needed and they must know we’re ready. We gotta work hard and play hard. What about it?”

There was a chorus of, “Yeah, let’s do it.” The Mercury Seven grabbed hands, and from that day forward they worked hard, played hard, and “gott’er done.” But there still was a problem—a “stinking” problem.

The astronauts’ crew quarters in Hangar S were smelly, military, uncomfortable, and too damn close to the chimpanzees’ colony. They spent their nights listening to the squat anthropoid apes hoot and holler and howl, and besides all this punishment, the astronauts had to step aside for one of the dung flingers to go into space first.

The Mercury Seven took a vote and decided they might have to follow one of these anthropoids into space, but they didn’t have to live with them, and the Homo sapiens abandoned Hangar S. They took up residence in their favorite motel on Cocoa Beach.

The Washington bean counters mumbled something about cost, but the astronauts gave them the silent finger. They felt human again and would spend hours jogging along the hard ocean sands, drinking in the fresh salt air while racing with pelicans and scattering hundreds of sandpipers.

Each astronaut had his own room at the Holiday Inn, run by Henri Landwirth, who as a boy had been one of Hitler’s guests in a concentration camp. Somehow the Belgian-born youngster survived the horrors and made it to the United States with two shirts and a pair of trousers. His one pair of shoes held up just long enough for him to apply for
American citizenship, after which he settled in Florida and became an innkeeper.

If the astronauts or anyone gave Henri or his staff trouble, he would throw them out. With his melodious Flemish accent, he reminded them, “Customers I can always get! Where am I going to find good help?”

Henri tried to hide his love for the astronauts, but his hospitality and food and his efforts to get them anything they needed gave him away. He was their protector. He offered them privacy and a place to relax. Gordo Cooper returned his love by having the motel pool filled with fish. With pole and fishhooks in hand, Gordo loudly announced, “I have never caught a fish in Florida, and this time it’s going to be different.” The rest of the guests weren’t too pleased about swimming with saltwater trout and dodging Gordo’s hooks. Happily for them, the chlorine soon killed the fish.

The fish-in-the-pool prank held the record until one night the Mercury launch team and the astronauts decided to move their party to Henri’s. The only problem was their party was on a boat. The chop on the river grew too rough so they picked up the vessel, carried it by hand across busy A1A, and dropped it in Henri’s swimming pool.

The astronauts and engineers clung to the boat, shouting, “More rum, wenches, more rum,” until Henri and crew jumped in the pool and heaved them overboard. It took two cranes and a house-mover to get the boat out of the pool the next day, but that wasn’t the end of it.

Wally Schirra was a masterful practical joker by himself, and one afternoon Henri and Wally walked out of Wally’s room, the innkeeper supporting a wounded astronaut with a bloody towel wrapped around his arm. The pool was crowded with reporters and tourists, and we rushed to Schirra’s aid.

Concerned, I asked, “What happened, Wally?”

Wally turned, nodding toward a large field of palmetto and shaggy oaks. “In there, Jay. It was in there. I don’t know what,” he groaned with pain, “but we got it—we got the damn thing…. It tore my arm up good.”

“Did you call a doctor?”

“There’s one on his way,” Henri nodded.

“Good,” I answered, staring at the thick, bloodied towel.

“We need to wait for the doctor in the room,” Henri said, and some of us followed a moaning Wally Schirra inside.

The bloodied astronaut pointed to a large box on his bed, covered with a blanket, and turned to me. “Be careful, Jay. That thing’s dangerous. I think it’s a mongoose.”

“Big mongoose,” Henri agreed.

I shook my head. “There are no mongooses in Florida.”

“Maybe it got loose or something. Who the hell cares?” Wally argued, growing more agitated. “Damnit, look for yourself.”

Being from a farm, I have never been too afraid of animals. I moved toward the box on the bed.

“Careful!” Wally insisted.

I was wondering why there was no movement in the box when—

WHAM!

A huge, spring-loaded hairy thing with long teeth and claws burst through the blanket into my face, knocking me backward onto the floor. Those who had followed me into the room shot outside, stopping a safe distance away. Wally was on the floor beside me, his arms around the “jack-in-the-box wild thing,” doubled over with laughter.

In the coming months, the “mongoose” sent some of the country’s most daring astronauts and fighter pilots hurtling through doors and windows to safety.

As of this writing, Wally tells me he still has his treasured mongoose in his garage.

P
roject Mercury was running out of days in February 1961, and a serious tone settled over the upcoming launch teams. But the decision to mislead the public as to who was going to be first held. The media’s general consensus was that John Glenn would be chosen. I didn’t agree. Shepard and I had swallowed a little too much of Jack Daniel’s sour mash one evening and, off the record, he told me.

I wished he hadn’t. Had I learned of his selection to be first another way, I could have used the information.

The secrecy surrounding the selection was to continue right up to launch day, with Bob Gilruth deciding that Shepard’s name would be made public only after the Mercury-Redstone lifted off. There was even some incredible deceptive plan about bringing all three of the astronauts to the pad dressed to fly, with hoods over their heads. That way not even the launch team would know who had climbed in the Mercury spacecraft to be first.

I ran into Gilruth in the Holiday Inn. I told him I had heard about this deception, and I asked him a simple question: “Why?”

He stared back and finally muttered, “It’s my business.”

I jumped in his face. “No, it is not your business,” I said bluntly. “It’s the American taxpayer’s business. NASA is a civilian, open agency. You want secrecy, join the CIA.”

He was not pleased. He walked away without another word.

No one in the know cared for Gilruth’s cover-up, but it was a minor irritation compared with the fact the chimpanzee was flying first. All that animal would do was bang levers and push buttons and get jolted with electricity if he didn’t perform as trained. The astronauts protested, but the medical folks insisted. There were too many unknowns about space flight to risk a human life without first sending up a chimp as a possible sacrifice. The fact that a chimpanzee is a highly intelligent anthropoid, an animal closely related to and resembling a human, didn’t matter. Killing one’
s animal cousin appeared to be acceptable.

Of the seven candidates that came to the Cape for final flight training, a chimp named Chang was considered to be prime, and Elvis was the backup. The only problem was that Elvis was a female, so named because of her long sideburns. In order to cause no offense, the names had to be changed. Chang became Ham and Elvis was christened Patti. Ham stood for “Holloman Aero Med,” his home in New Mexico, and (known to just a very few) Patti stood for “Patrice Lumumba,” the African tyrant, because the chimps came from the French Cameroon.

NASA selected the newly crowned Ham, and on January 31, 1961, the astronauts gathered to watch the launch. The flight turned out to be a bit more interesting. Redstone had a “hot engine.” It burned all of its fuel five seconds early. The control system sensed that something was
wrong. Instantly it ignited the escape tower hooked to the Mercury capsule, and it blew the spacecraft away. This sent Ham higher, faster, and farther. The chimpanaut landed 122 miles beyond his target and came down hard, hitting the ocean with a teeth-jarring stop.