The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story (32 page)

Thank you to the Astrokids, including the Shepard girls, Laura, Julie, and Alice; and Kent Slayton, with whom I floated with down the Banana River watching
Atlantis
soar. Thank you to the Lovell kids, Barbara, as well as Susan and Jay (who run the fabulous “Lovell’s of Lake Forest” restaurant, where you can sip a Godiva chocolate Mount Marilyn Martini), Kathleen Collins (Pat Collins’s daughter, who grew up to be an actress on
All My Children
), Ann Collins, Rosemary Roosa (whose Steel Magnolia Astro-mama went to the same school as Elvis), Suzy Schirra, Mark Grissom, Teresa Dawn Cernan, and others. Thank you to
Life
den mother Fifi Booth and Nurse Dee O’Hara. Thank you to Pat Kleinknecht and Grace Wiesmann, who accepted astronaut wings for her husband, X-15 rocket pilot Joe Walker.

Thanks to all the writers and journalists, past and present, who chronicled space; and the historians, including Jennifer Ross-Nazzal at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, social and cultural dimensions curator Margaret Weitekamp at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and senior curator Roger Lanius; and also to John and Kathy Charles. Thank you to the extraordinary Ann Patty; also Kaly Soto, Mark Seliger, Michael Angelo, and Lisa Perry for suiting me up in one of her mod sixties-inspired dresses, and Sarah Self. Thank you to my out-of-this-world agent, Larry Weissman, and his wife, Sascha Alper, for her keen eye.

Thank you to Mission Control at Grand Central Publishing. My wonderful editor Helen Atsma, Jamie Raab, Deb Futter, Emi Battaglia, Matthew Ballast, Brad Parsons, Kirsten Reach, Karen Torres, Martha Otis, Andy LeCount, Chris Murphy, David Young, my editor at Headline in the UK, Sarah Emsley, and Mari Roberts. Thank you to all my friends and family, Brooke, Mara, Bob, Niko, Carolyn, Fred, Laura, and most deeply to my husband, Tom. And our two spacey rescue dogs, Ozzy and Lucky.

Photos

The Mercury wives entertaining, Virginia, 1959. From lower left: Rene Carpenter, Annie Glenn, Jo Schirra, Betty Grissom, Marge Slayton, and Trudy Cooper with tray.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Rene and kids on the day the Mercury astronauts were announced, Garden Grove, California, 1959.
(Courtesy: Leonard McCombe/Life Magazine/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Clockwise from top left: Jo Schirra, Louise Shepard, Marge Slayton, Betty Grissom, Trudy Cooper, Annie Glenn; middle, Rene Carpenter.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Annie Glenn towing John across the Chesapeake Bay inlet near Langley, Virginia, September 1959.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Jo Schirra and Marge Slayton with kids at Stoneybrook pool, September 1959.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Marge, Rene, Jo, and Betty watch Alan Shepard’s Redstone rocket blast off, Cocoa Beach, May 1961.
(Courtesy: Robert W. Kelley/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Betty Grissom at her Virginia home after Gus’s hatch blew, July 1961.
(Courtesy: Ed Clark/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Rene and Scott Carpenter do the twist at the Armory dance for the astronauts, 1962.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Rene betrays the nail-biting strain during Scott’s
Aurora 7
flight, May 1962.
(Courtesy: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Barbara Young chain-smokes and watches her husband’s Gemini 3 mission, March 1965.
(Courtesy: Michael Rougier/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)