The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story (7 page)

Marge decided enough was enough, and she finally gave Deke an ultimatum. “Tell them I’m coming to wash your damn Ban-Lon shirts. That I’m looking for a job. That I’m your girlfriend. That ought to do it!”

Deke drove out to the Cape and shot the breeze with the guards at the gate while Marge hid on the backseat floor underneath a couple of blankets. Recounting her adventure to the wives afterward, she said, “I was having a nicotine fit, and I just about jumped up and asked those guards for a cigarette.”

She didn’t want to get Deke in trouble for breaking the rules, or to do anything to jeopardize his chance to be the first man in space. After she popped up her head, she realized there wasn’t much to see at the Cape, only scrub grass and a couple of lonely launch pads, where she hoped Deke would make history. Suddenly, she looked over and saw Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., the appropriately named flight director, who would have no small part in making the big decision of who would go up first. He stared right at her. Marge could have just died.

On another occasion, the wives were treated to a sporting boat trip down the coast to ooh and ahh over technological marvels created for their husbands’ journeys, like the green dye marker that would show the rescue crews of frogmen where their husbands’ “can” had landed. Its brilliant color was now spreading across the waves. After this fun fact was pointed out to them, perfectly bred Jo, emboldened by the company of the wives, asked, “Is that how we’ll know where to throw the wreath?” She made them all laugh through their fears.

The grand finale was getting to watch the test firing of the Atlas rocket, which would first be manned by Enos the chimpanzee, then by their husbands for the orbital flights. It was an ominous, gray, overcast day. Everyone on the beach craned their necks to see the magnificent bird rise in the distance from its launch pad on the Cape on a red-hot thrust of flame.

The girls looked on in amazement. Then
kaboom!
The rocket exploded like a bomb.

“Oh, thank God the monkey wasn’t in that one,” cracked one of them.

The wives knew NASA was looking not only at how their husbands flew, but how they lived at home. Alan Shepard offered an easy scapegoat, comedian Will Dana’s joke being if he had slept with as many women as he was rumored to, “his dick would have fallen off.” Besides, why would Alan want to squash the rumors? His reputation for astronomical virility might even help him outshine the competition! Wasn’t riding a rocket the biggest test of manhood around?

Still, the wives felt terrible for Louise. They called her Saint Louise, not because the Christian Scientist was churchy like organ-playing Annie, but because she was so serene and ladylike. She smiled so genuinely; often she seemed to glow from within.

Finally, in their own version of their husbands’ Kona Kai Séance, the wives broached the subject during a get-together at Jo’s house. They asked Louise if she knew what her husband was doing. It was so obvious. How could she turn a blind eye to Alan’s constant fooling around?

Louise had to catch her breath before she composed her answer—“Because I’m the one he really loves.”

The wives thought it was just awful. Louise was in total denial, lost in her own world and glued to her great consolation and time-passer, needlepoint. She would sit for hours sewing light yellow into the depths of brown, giving shape to florals, flame stitches, even abstract designs. She never stuck the wrong color in the wrong square, and rarely seemed to miss a hole. Neither did Alan.

At home during the week in Virginia Beach while Alan was off at the Cape training, Louise managed a household of girls, looking after her two daughters, Laura and Julie, and a niece, Alice, who had lived with the Shepards ever since Louise’s sister had died from mysterious causes. Louise had already gone through long periods of separation from Alan as a Navy wife. As the other wives noticed, Louise had an unusual elegance and reserve about her. She had been raised at Longwood Gardens, the spectacular Du Pont estate in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where her father was the chief groundskeeper and engineer.

Longwood Gardens was America’s Versailles, more than a thousand acres comprising formal Italian and French gardens, English rose gardens, woodlands, meadows, and a glass-canopied conservatory lush with orchids and exotic flowers. Inspired by the grand Italianate marble fountains of Europe, Mr. Du Pont had created similar wonders on his estate. Louise’s father was a favorite of his and he sent her parents all over Europe to study these great fountains, so her father could design and construct water marvels for the Du Pont estate.

The most splendiferous feature Louise’s father designed was a massive pipe organ connected to an extensive system of fountains and colored lights. As a girl, Louise had often helped her father create brilliant bursts of colored water with the push of a button or the press of a pedal. The ever-changing colors of the water jets provided a magnificent backdrop for the ballets staged at the Du Ponts’.

Old man Du Pont didn’t have any children, so the couple was especially attentive to Louise and her older sister, Adele, who were affectionately known as VIP kids around the estate. When they were little girls, they used to play hide-and-go-seek in the underground passage that connected the groundskeeper’s cottage to the main house. They enjoyed tea parties in the trellised garden with their dolls and teddy bears, and when they were older they were invited to the formal tea dances, garden parties, and lavish balls the Du Ponts hosted. Louise was like Audrey Hepburn, starring in
Sabrina
as the chauffeur’s daughter living on a wealthy estate. The Du Ponts even returned from one of their many tours of the Continent with new dresses for the sisters.

When Louise was a teenager, her parents sent her to Principia in St. Louis, a private Christian Science boarding school. People dismissed Christian Science as that religion that didn’t allow you to go to a doctor, which was true, but in the East, Christian Science had high social cachet. At Principia, Louise was known as “Frosty” because of her icy reserve. They also called her “Miss Westinghouse,” after the refrigerator. It was at Principia, at a Christmas dance, that she met Alan, who was there visiting his sister Polly. He, too, had grown up going to a Christian Science church (although his faith didn’t particularly carry into adulthood). Louise’s schoolmates thought he was an arrogant jerk and didn’t want her to marry him, but marry him she did, and she was not sorry about it.

Keeping up her calm and elegant demeanor, her “Frosty” façade, proved to be a perennially challenging part of being Alan Shepard’s wife. Louise took her role as a Navy wife seriously. She was loving but strict with her girls, and she used secret codes to keep them in line. If they didn’t put their napkins in their laps, Louise would look over and very quietly say, “White Sails.” If, after taking a serving of fruit cocktail, the girls had neglected to return their spoons to the doily on their place setting, Louise would say, “Star-Spangled Banner.” That meant, “Spoons out of the bowl, girls, spoons by your plates. Mind your manners!” It was a monumental challenge for Louise to maintain her composure when she and her daughters were invited to an opulent invitation-only luncheon in the wardroom of Alan’s ship, which was docked in port. Louise’s girls observed the linen tablecloths and silver service and asked, “Mommy, how come Daddy is so rich and we are so poor?” There were no secret codes to answer that question, which struck at the heart of Navy life. The men were heroes and the families were broke.

Louise’s religion had helped her survive Alan’s days as a Navy test pilot. Her bible, Mary Baker Eddy’s
Science and Health
, stressing the power of positive thinking, was always near and dear. Mrs. Eddy counseled not to dwell on dark thoughts, which was perfect for a test pilot’s wife. Still, Louise insisted that if Alan was going to be even a little late coming home, he had to call her at exactly five o’clock to warn her. Otherwise she’d be squinting at the sky, looking for those awful black clouds that meant someone’s husband had crashed to the ground in a burning hulk.

On the day that Alan was announced as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, one of the newspaper photographers had snapped a photo of Louise posing rather awkwardly in front of her mailbox. When the papers came out the next day, the address on her mailbox, 580 Brandon Road, could clearly be read. Louise received a boatload of mail, letters written by housewives across the country with cheery messages like
Good Luck!
and
God Bless You, Dear
, some clipped to a check written out for a generous sum. It seemed most of the women in the country believed Louise would end up a widow now that Alan was officially an astronaut.

On January 20, 1961, while the wintry light shone on the crowd huddled before the Capitol steps for John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the handsome new president, beaming with hope, spoke of a “New Frontier” that, as it came to pass, would include going to the Moon by the end of the decade. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” Kennedy said, “ask what you can do for your country.”

The day before, the astronauts had been called into NASA head Bob Gilruth’s office for a meeting. “I have something important to tell you,” Gilruth said. NASA had made its decision. “This is the most difficult choice 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. Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital Redstone flight.”

They were all stunned, especially John Glenn, who had been sure he was going to be chosen to be the first man in space. Instead, he was slated to be the backup pilot not only to Alan, but also to Gus, who would make the second suborbital flight. John would have to go up third. It was a difficult pill for him to swallow. Where was the glory in that? The
third
man in space?

Perhaps it had something to do with the Kona Kai Séance, which had turned a few of the boys against John. Not long after that caper, the astronauts had to rate each other for their “peer vote.” John called it “a popularity contest.” In the weeks after the decision, he fought NASA until he was finally told to be a good sport.

Alan managed to control his jubilation by forcing his expression to stay neutral and staring at the floor. Freckle-faced John was steaming, but he reached out and gave Alan a congratulatory handshake; all the other guys followed suit. Then they left the room. Standing there alone, Alan realized there would be no celebratory drinks tonight; still, he was elated. So he raced down the highway to his home in Virginia Beach. Alan strode into the house, looking into the living room where Louise liked to sit on the carpet and play solitaire. “Louise! Louise, you home?”

She came into the room. “You got it! You got the first ride!” She could tell by his smile. He hugged her, squeezing her so hard she nearly squealed.

“Lady, you can’t tell anyone, but you have your arms around the man who’ll be the first in space!”

“Who let a Russian in here?” was Louise’s naughty reply.

The only catch, Alan explained, was that though he was definitely going to be
first
, NASA wanted to withhold the news until the day of the launch. This would protect Louise and the girls. Otherwise, the press would be all over them like on that first day.

NASA told the press that the choice would be among the three men—Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Gus Grissom.
Life
promptly nicknamed them the Gold Team. (The editors acted like it had always been clear that these three were the most impressive of the seven.)

Louise couldn’t tell her two youngest girls, her daughter Julie and her niece, Alice, both of whom were chatty little girls and would surely tell their secret. Louise did tell her oldest daughter, Laura, who was thirteen and, like her mother before her, attending Principia boarding school. For Laura it was torture keeping the secret, as it must have been for Louise. “It’s going to be John Glenn,” Laura’s friends at school taunted. Laura, who was blonde and as competitive as her dad, had to bite her tongue because she had been sworn to secrecy.

The launch was scheduled to take place in the spring. All of the wives were counting on “Miss Frosty” to show them how a proper wife acted when her husband was shot up into space. Louise knew the worst could happen on Alan’s shot, but she didn’t give in to her fears. She sat calmly and worked her needlepoint. In
Life
’s first feature on the wives, under the headline “Just Go Right Ahead, by Louise Shepard,” Louise told readers, “I suppose I have the same faith in technology that most Americans have: this continuous steady feeling that the wheels of the car will turn and the brakes will work when I come to the next stop light. But I am a Christian Scientist and have a strong spiritual faith. If the brakes don’t work, I know that something else will.”

In the accompanying photo, she was wearing Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless white oxford blouse. She was dealing out a game of four-way solitaire to her girls, who wore outfits identical to their mother’s. Her serene smile hid a tremendous will to keep everything looking perfect at their home.

Louise’s “Who let a Russian in here?” comment to Alan turned out to be not so witty as when she’d made it. In April 1961, when Alan’s launch was originally scheduled, NASA delayed the flight, suddenly wanting to make two additional tests of the Redstone rocket, including one with Ham the chimp. In the meantime, Alan was beaten to the chase by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made history by actually
orbiting
Earth.

A reporter woke up Shorty Powers early one morning at the Cape to get NASA’s reaction. A groggy Shorty yelled into the phone, “We’re all asleep down here!” The morning’s headline followed: “Soviets Put Man in Space. Spokesman Says U.S. Asleep.” Alan was disgusted. “We had ’em,” he said. “We had ’em by the shorthairs and we gave it away.”

Alan was already in his capsule on the day of his flight when the big announcement was made that he was the One. Then the weather fouled up and the launch had to be postponed. Now that the surprise was blown, Louise worried that on the day of his rescheduled launch, May 5, she would be completely overrun by the press. She called the local police, but the chief’s only suggestion was “Why don’t you book yourself into a motel under a new name, lady?”