Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman (8 page)

But in the classroom, he showed no such determination, nor any of the intellectual curiosity that had hel
ped him skip two grades back in East Derry. Midshipmen were graded on a scale of 0 to 4, with grades below 2.5 considered deficient. Many of Shepard’s grades were between 2.5 and 3.1, barely above that line, and sometimes he dropped below it. In Spanish he had received a 2.37 in the spring of his plebe year; foreign-language classes had dogged him since high school, where French was his only sub-85 grade. In the fall of 1942 he earned another deficiency, a 2.44 in his combined English, history, and government class, called EHG.

In addition to poor grades, Shepard was accumulating conduct demerits for breaking the strict rules of behavior and decorum. By the end of his plebe year he had racked up forty-nine demerits—a large number for a freshman—for infractions such as unshined shoes or being out of uniform. He earned another twenty-two through the fall of 1942, although he managed to talk his way out of many more than that.

By late 1942 Shepard ranked 676th in his class of 1,000. Academics had usually come easy to him; rarely had Shepard struggled like this. Finally he was called before an
academic board to discuss his substandard performance. In a subsequent report the board noted that his poor grades made Shepard eligible for “reassignment.” That is, he could be dropped from the academy and sent to the Navy fleet—to war.

Shepard knew all too well what that meant. A tuition-free academy education wasn’t a free ride. Graduates had to “pay” for the education with five years of service as a naval officer. If they failed to graduate, they’d repay their debt as an enlisted sailor. He’d become just some swab aboard some ship—an anonymous sailor among hundreds of other sailors. And his dreams of flying would be dashed. That day, though, the academic board decided to give Shepard another chance. He had until the end of the academic year—the spring of 1943—to bring up his grades, improve his behavior, and
basically get his shit together.

If not, he’d be expelled and shipped to the Navy, which at the time was fighting dozens of bloody battles against Japanese-held islands in the South Pacific.

Surprisingly, even the threat of expulsion didn’t at first impede one of Shepard’s most diligent extracurricular pursuits.

The historic, cove-front fishing town of Annapolis (also Maryland’s state capital) was known to midshipmen as “Crab-town.” Its women were “crabs” or “crabbies,” and the town was teeming with them. As if making up for lost time, Shepard discovered what he’d been missing in high school. And, he learned in Annapolis, he had a knack for it.

Because midshipmen weren’t allowed to have cars, the only escape was by foot. Shepard would wait until after lights-out, then sneak out of Bancroft Hall and down to the southern tip of campus. There a bulkhead held back Spa Creek and it was possible to edge carefully around the ten-foot stone wall that encircled the campus. Generations of midshipmen called it going “
over the wall.” Doing it once was considered a rite of passage, but Shepard made a habit of it. Afterward he’d sneak back into his room, well past midnight, and slip into bed. One night an upperclassman was waiting for him and tacked another few demerits onto Shepard’s record.

“He always had some chick he thought was worth the risk,” said upperclassman Dick Sewall, who wrote up a number of Shepard’s so-called frap sheets; in midshipman-speak, someone busted going over the wall was “frapped” or “fried.” Sewall admitted, though, that he often fell for Shepard’s diplomatic pleas for leniency and, as one of Shepard’s patron saints, ripped up a few of Shepard’s frap sheets.

Midway through sophomore year, a year’s worth of push-ups and early-morning exercises, which were everyday chores of academy life, had helped fill out Shepard’s wiry frame. He was still slender and would remain so his whole life. But with a bit of extra muscle, he now carried himself not as a boy but as a full chested, strong-armed man.

That physical maturity, combined with a precocious self-confidence, contributed to a reputation with women that absolutely amazed his classmates. And Shepard learned how to position himself in all the right social situations: He religiously volunteered to serve on the committees that organized the academy’s dances and hops.

Shepard never missed a school dance and, on weekends and nights off, attended dances or parties in town as well. If he didn’t already have a “crab”—also called a “drag”—by his side, he would by night’s end. He seemed so at ease around women, able to walk right up to a young lady and almost disarm them with a social grace that made him seem older than his nineteen years. Classmate Bob Kirk said Shepard had “a facility for creating the impression of instant friendship.” Shepard once boasted to friends of a girl he met during a weekend trip back home an
d how he infuriated his father by leaving two sets of muddy footprints in Bart’s car—on the ceiling. Kirk said Shepard “appreciated the better things in life” and was “almost as facile (with) the young ladies as he was managing to evade the duty officer’s search for would-be jitterbuggers.”

Shepard’s roommate, Bob Williams, “was in awe of him . . . he processed a lot of women.” But during the Christmas holidays of 1942, during a brief trip to the nation’s heartland, Shepard would meet the woman who eclipsed any of Annapolis’ crabbies.

Due to wartime travel restrictions, Alan’s sister, Polly, couldn’t make it home to New Hampshire for Christmas break that year, so Alan decided to visit her at Principia College, a college for Christian Scientists outside St. Louis, where she was a freshman. He planned to spend the first half of his Christmas break with Polly, then travel back to East Derry. Hopping a Navy cargo plane, he arrived in St. Louis on a Friday night in time for dinner. After dinner, he and Polly walked to Principia’s field house, which blinked and glittered with decorations for the annual Christmas dance, with s
treamers of blue and gold (also the Naval Academy’s school colors) hanging from basketball hoops, twinkling lights on a potted pine tree.

Within minutes of entering the room he spotted Louise Brewer, standing with friends across the gym floor. The routine had become second nature for him: quickly sweep the room, find the prettiest girl, make a beeline. But rarely had the prettiest girl looked like this. “Who’s that girl over there?” he asked Polly, who told him not to waste his time chasing Louise Brewer, who was beautiful, popular—and had a steady boyfriend. But Alan, looking fit and slim in his dark blue uniform, feeling confident and strong from his early-morning exercises, persisted. Boyfriend or not, he wanted to
meet the girl with the narrow waist, long brown hair, and wonderful, radiant face.

At a glance, it’d be hard to call Alan the handsomest in the room; he had a long face, and everything on it was just a bit too pronounced—the eyes, the ears, and the enormous smile, framed by dimples, with his teeth slightly askew. But he had developed a grace, a way of carrying himself, chin up and out, that caught people’s eye.

Louise’s boyfriend, it turned out, had traveled home for the holidays, so she sat talking with Alan most of the night. Alan told her about life at Annapolis, his childhood in the snowy New England hills, his plans to someday fly airplanes. Louise spoke of her own childhood as a “VIP kid” at Longwood Gardens—a sprawling estate southeast of Philadelphia, owned by chemical baron Pierre S. DuPont, where her father ran the maintenance department. She had a great laugh and was full of confidence and poise. They danced nearly every dance, and met again two days later at a Sunday night
Tea Sing at the chapel, where they stood side by side singing carols.

Louise Brewer could easily have been mistaken for Rita Hayworth’s younger sister. She had luxurious hair, perfect teeth, and a long, sensuous neck. She was virginal and sexy at the same time. And there was something else—something ethereal about her composure that, Alan would learn, made many men worship her from afar.

Alan joined the club of worshipers, and on Monday’s train ride toward Boston he kept thinking of Louise’s green eyes and elegant smile. She wasn’t like the others he’d dated. She seemed so much more sophisticated than the crabs back at Annapolis.

His parents picked him up in Boston, and he told them all about Louise Brewer on the car ride north. As soon as he got home, he sat at the desk in his room to write a letter in which he boldly invited her to his Ring Dance in June, a highlight of Naval Academy life. That note would be the first in an effusive, sometimes emotional exchange of letters that would continue between Alan and Louise for the next two years.

Louise was born, like Alan, in the upstairs bedroom of her parents’ house. Her parents, like Renza Shepard, were devoted Christian Scientists who served as “readers” conducting Sunday services at the church in nearby Wilmington, Delaware.

Louise’s parents, Russell (called Phil) and Julia, were known as “pensioners” on the DuPont family’s Longwood estate. Pensioners tended the estate’s sprawl of farms and fountains, gardens and greenhouses. In return they received free housing and many other kindnesses from Pierre and Alice DuPont.

With profits from his family’s growing chemical empire, Pierre S. DuPont bought the undulating farmland in 1906 and transformed it into a tribute to nature and beauty. Modeled after French and Italian gardens he had visited, the estate featured water gardens, reflecting pools, a conservatory, and numerous hydraulic-powered fountains, which Phil Brewer helped design and build. In the conservatory, a colorful, sometimes drunken group of master gardeners from England and Ireland grew oranges, pineapples, espaliered nectarines, cantaloupes, and, in a special greenhouse, orchids.

Longwood’s hierarchy resembled that of a coal mining town or, in some eyes, a plantation—a self-sustaining community with its own dairy farm and schools, where workers’ families lived entirely beholden to their benefactor, DuPont. But the Brewers had it better than most. As superintendent of maintenance, Phil Brewer was one of five department heads—essentially vice presidents—and grew to become one of DuPont’s closest advisers, as much a friend as an employee. The Brewers lived in the largest of the pensioners’ houses, a large stone manse called the Anvil, which was built especiall
y for them on a secluded corner of the estate. Hundreds of other pensioners, meanwhile, lived down on Red Lion Row, a lane of duplexes built for workers’ families.

Louise and her sister, Adele, enjoyed a sometimes magical childhood, witnesses on the fringe of a modern mini Versailles. As daughters of a department head—or “VIP girls”—they received special attentions, such as the dresses Mrs. DuPont bought them in Europe. Louise and Adele attended lavish balls in the glass-encased conservatory, where twelve hundred guests watched ballet and fireworks. At one such party, John Philip Sousa’s band performed; at another, nymphs danced in the water garden.

For Louise, it was a conflicted life—she was both the hired help and the inner circle. She mixed with other pensioners’ children during the day and at night she mingled with dignitaries or royalty at DuPont dinner parties and concerts. A highlight of the year was the Christmas party. Families lined up in the conservatory to receive their annual gift from the DuPonts; the kids usually received one piece of clothing and one toy. But the Brewers didn’t have to line up; they were seated in the balcony of the conservatory when the other families arrived. Each year they received gifts of fine china.