At the end of the day, Jerrie finished her letter, she didn’t need to be the first woman in space. She just wanted that first woman to be an American. “My aim is not personal but to get a group of women included in the space program on a sound, orderly scientific basis. No less I can do, with a sound conscience.”
Whether because of Jerrie’s dogged persistence or because the right people were starting to get wind of her crusade, the conversation began to shift in Washington. There was some talk about whether women ought to be included in future astronaut classes. Congressman Ken Hechler on the House space committee was in favor of seriously considering women, so much so that he inserted a copy of Jerrie’s “Space for Women” talk into the Congressional Record.
The tone of press coverage around women in space was also starting to change. With the story of Jerrie and the other “astronaut hopefuls” growing old, journalists began highlighting women who were actually working with NASA, like the astronauts’ nurse Dee O’Hara and astronomer Nancy Grace Roman. But Jerrie’s name was rarely absent from these pieces. She was still considered “America’s first woman astronaut,” often quoted as extolling the virtues of women’s emotional and physical stability in space—“so brace yourselves, men!”
The more such pieces she read, the more Jackie realized that the media was the problem, that these stories about women astronauts were doing little more than feeding Jerrie’s false impressions of her own importance in a program that did not exist. So she did what she could to set the record straight. Jackie wrote to the journalists whose stories she read explaining that there was no program for women, that the early medical tests were part of a research program, and warned that any false publicity risked delaying or even cancelling possible future steps for the women. She kept NASA abreast of these reports, too. When Current Biography magazine published an entry on Jerrie that said she had been “invited by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to undergo a series of qualifying tests for the astronaut training program”—described as NASA’s own and not Randy’s—on account of her “brilliant flying record,” Jackie sent the entry to Hugh Dryden. The clipping set off a flurry of internal memos at the space agency, all of which asserted that “Miss Jerrie Cobb is not ‘the first woman to satisfy the criteria for space flight set by NASA,’ since she does not meet the selection criteria for astronaut candidates.”
* * *
Jackie landed her Lodestar at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on the afternoon of May 7, 1962, to find a pack of journalists waiting for her. They knew about her ambitions of flying higher than 100,000 feet and at twice the speed of sound; she’d said as much after securing nineteen records on a recent flight from Gander, Newfoundland, to Hannover, Germany. But as she was in town for the second Peaceful Uses of Space conference, they wanted to know if she hoped to add first woman in space to her growing list of accolades.
“First woman in space?” She repeated the question, then paused before answering. “I’m not even fifty. But they seem to want younger astronauts. Personally I do not think age should bar a trained person from space journeys. If I were permitted, I would give anything to get into the space program.” Her drive was real, but her age was not; she was days from turning fifty-six and wholly unwilling to admit that to the press.
The next night she sat at the head table alongside John Glenn, Wernher von Braun, Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, and two dozen other major players in the nation’s space program as they listened to Jim Webb’s after-dinner remarks. There were no surprise consultancy suggestions or discussions of women in space this year. Instead, the conference focused on how far NASA had come in the past twelve months and how far it had yet to go.
The conference was a busy two days for Jackie, so much so that she couldn’t find time to have a private word with Jim about women in space.
Days later, back in his office at NASA headquarters in Washington, Jackie’s name landed on Jim’s desk in a handwritten note from Elvis Stahr, secretary of the army. “This strikes me as such a well-reasoned letter that I asked Jackie’s permission to show it to you. It’s not my business, of course, but Jackie is a good friend—whom you would enjoy meeting. Will arrange if you like.” Attached was a copy of Jackie’s March 23 letter to Jerrie.
Jim read the four-page correspondence and found Jackie’s argument both reasonable and well expressed, but he didn’t have time to meet with her. He was in the midst of seemingly endless appearances before Congress about agency funding and preparations for the second orbital Mercury mission while guiding the space agency through its second round of astronaut selection. And he still had to commit Apollo to a lunar mission mode. “When this lets up a bit,” he wrote to Elvis Stahr in response, “perhaps the three of us can meet.”
He did, however, make a point of following up with Jackie. “There have been many pressures to go into a program that would be aimed at putting the first woman into space,” he wrote on May 24, the same day Scott Carpenter completed three orbits around the globe in his Mercury spacecraft named Aurora 7. “We have felt it imperative to use astronauts who had extensive flight experience with experimental jet high-performance aircraft. The ability to react from a background of long experience with high-performance aircraft is very important, particularly in these early flights, and it has seemed to us should continue to be overriding in the selection of the next group of astronauts. However, if there are women with this experience who wish to apply, we certainly will consider them along with all other applicants.”
He ended the letter thanking Jackie for her support of NASA’s programs.
Reading Jim’s reply, Jackie worried he’d badly misinterpreted her intentions. To her, it read as though he believed she was one of the people pressing to get women training as astronauts right away, which she wasn’t. Restating her position in still another letter, she added a warning. “I think you are likely to let yourself in for a lot of continuing harassment if you continue to take the position that even now women with such experience will, if they apply, be considered along with all other applicants. This position stated by you may be looked upon by some as a slightly cracked door to be opened with a push.” She had a plan, she said, to eliminate this pushing from women.
* * *
On June 13, Jerrie’s yearlong unrealized consultancy with NASA came to an end. There was neither a formal letter about her firing nor any reference to her unpaid stipend of fifty dollars a day; she was simply not retained. Janey, meanwhile, was receiving a growing number of letters from college coeds who wrote asking how they could plan for a future in science. Janey could almost feel these students’ discouragement. The nation needed scientists, but these young women could barely see beyond the obstacles stacked up in their way.
But both women felt the lawmakers in Washington were starting to take them seriously. By sheer luck, Jerrie managed to meet with George P. Miller, the representative from California who was serving as chairman of the House space committee. He supported the women’s cause and believed both Jerrie and Janey when they said it was all a matter of discrimination against women. George threw his weight behind them, eventually generating enough support to set up a congressional hearing. Things moved quickly, and by the middle of June the hearing was set for a month hence, a hearing wherein the House Committee on Science and Astronautics would investigate the alleged discrimination in the space agency against women.
* * *
Janey arrived at Jackie’s Manhattan apartment for a lunch meeting on the first Wednesday in June. She knew Jackie had heard about the House hearing and suspected she wanted to have her say on the record.
Stepping inside, Janey was stunned; Jackie’s foyer alone was a display of power. The front hallway featured a large compass inlay on the floor. The sky blue walls were painted with scenes of planes flying through the air. Shelves against both walls held Jackie’s dozens of trophies and awards, so many that they spilled onto the floor. It all made Janey more nervous than she already was; be
yond their differing stances on female spaceflight, Janey and Philip were wild-eyed liberals compared to Jackie and Floyd’s conservative politics. She wondered whether they would get along at all.
Janey told Jackie what she knew about the pending hearing, which wasn’t much. She knew that the subcommittee was headed by Democratic Congressman George Miller of California and that both she and Jerrie would be testifying, but couldn’t say if Jackie would be able to appear as a witness as well. In any case, Janey asked that Jackie submit a statement so her views could at least be on the record. Then she listened as Jackie told her the same thing she’d been saying all along: there was no national need to rush a women-in-space program. Throughout the meal, Floyd stayed quiet.
To Janey’s ear, it was almost as if Jackie was adamant that if she couldn’t be the first woman in space, no woman should fly. She couldn’t say she was surprised by Jackie’s attitude, but she had hoped the aviatrix might be more sympathetic. By the end of their lunch, Janey knew that without Jackie on their side the cards were stacked against her and Jerrie.
A little over a week later, stories about the upcoming hearing popped up all over the country. Reports said Democratic Congressman Victor Anfuso of New York had agreed to serve as the subcommittee’s chairman. He had a long history of interest in space and a desire to serve on the committees that would shape the nation’s space program. He was also a longtime friend of Lyndon Johnson’s, someone from whom the vice president had drawn inspiration throughout his career. The two had joked that Victor might leverage his political position to fly in space himself. Victor was such a fan of the space program and the astronauts that he’d even made moves to have Cape Canaveral renamed in John Glenn’s honor after his orbital mission.
Jackie read about the hearing in the newspaper, and though she was going to Europe that afternoon, she didn’t want to leave the country without making sure her opinion was on the record. “I have drafted such a statement and I leave for Europe within the hour to be back early July,” she told Janey, adding that she would send a final copy to her before the hearing.
She also wrote to Jim Webb, including a copy of her position in eight bullet points. “You will note,” she said in her cover letter, “that I am taking the position that these things should be left to the decision of NASA.” Her formal statement reiterated what she’d been saying for months. She didn’t believe there had been any intentional or actual discrimination against women and that the determination for astronauts “should not depend on the question of sex but on whether such inclusion will speed up, slow down, make more expensive or complicate the schedule of exploratory space flights our country has undertaken.” What she wanted, more than anything, was to see a soundly organized women’s testing program akin to the WASPs. Copies made their way to all the important players—Hugh Dryden, Bob Gilruth, chief of staff of the US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Admiral Robert Pirie, and of course Randy. She also sent her statement to Janey and to Gene Nora, the one pilot who had shown her the most support. Across the board, her statement earned favorable responses from all the NASA brass.
Only Randy offered Jackie any feedback; since he was unwilling to jeopardize his position with NASA by taking a stance, he told her his opinion so she might speak for him: “The main reason we went into the examination of potential women astronauts was not from the standpoint that they would actually pilot the spacecraft at all, or at least for any appreciable time, but that they would fill a definite need for the experimental program that is anticipated. We thought it was essential that the first women in space should be highly trained pilots as they have proved they have courage, determination and are highly motivated or else they wouldn’t be where they are in their flying careers. There has never been any time when any of us felt we could determine woman’s future in space on the basis of examining one individual or even a few. We do not recommend injecting women into the middle of the present program but we do need to subject them on the ground to the stresses that they would be exposed to there. We feel that much more would be gained if they were pilots and that is the reason we would like to limit these tests to women pilots at the moment.”
Again, Randy used a handwritten postscript to make his personal feelings known. “We have missed seeing Floyd and you. Congratulations again on all the records.”
Janey was disappointed when she learned that Victor Anfuso had been appointed chairman of the subcommittee. She felt George Miller was more supportive of the women and favored establishing a long-term research program rather than a crash program. He had, after all, called for the hearing in the first place. Now she worried the whole thing would become little more than an attention play by Victor. She wrote to Jackie, relaying her thoughts on the hearing. She figured she might as well give Jackie all the facts in case she was called upon to testify.
On July 9, Jackie was formally asked to testify at the hearing in a letter from Richard P. Hines, a staff consultant to the Committee on Science and Astronautics. “Hearings have therefore been scheduled before the subcommittee to begin July 17,” the letter told her. “Mr. Anfuso would like to have you appear at that time, if convenient. He is also inviting Miss Jerrie Cobb and Mrs. Philip Hart to appear. I am sure you realize all our Committee hearings are held for the purpose of determining facts in the most objective manner, and we try to remain as non-partisan as possible and express judgements and conclusions based upon testimony presented by advocates both pro and con.” It came as no surprise to Jackie that Jerrie and Janey would be testifying; it had, after all, been their waves in Washington that had gotten this hearing scheduled in the first place. Jackie could actually look at this lineup as a positive. Having followed Jerrie’s every move for more than a year, she was sure there wouldn’t be any surprises in the proceedings.
Jerrie, meanwhile, wrote the other women another “Dear FLATS” letter alerting them to the coming hearing. “It is probable that names and a brief biography of each of you will be released officially,” she wrote. In the event the press contacted them, she urged them to all “work together and represent this as the sound and serious program it is.” She didn’t stop to think that each woman’s experience with her singular week of medical testing had been vastly different than her own months-long fight.
International Women’s Air and Space Museum
On July 11, six days before the hearing, Jackie sent her testimony to Victor Anfuso. That same day, Jim sat before the gathered media at a NASA press conference. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he opened the afternoon’s proceedings. “It seems to me that we might look back very briefly to a little more than a year ago when President Kennedy made his original decision to put forward an increased augmented space program.” In that time, NASA had awarded contracts to build the essential hardware and spent months considering the intricacies of the mission, but “in all of this program there remained the final decision as to exactly how the first effort to make an exploration of the moon with men would be achieved.” But they finally had an answer. Lunar-orbit rendezvous, exhaustive studies confirmed, was the only way forward. NASA was thus inviting industry contractors to submit their bids to build the lunar module that would actually land on the Moon. With just over seven years to the end of the decade, the agency was not only short on time, it was also making this its top priority. “We will have a period of perhaps three months within which to get the proposals from industry, to evaluate them carefully, and to reach a final decision.” On the question of astronaut selection, Jim announced that the preliminary group had been narrowed to thirty-two, all qualified test pilots whose skill was up to the challenge of this demanding flight. Of those selected, he expected one of them would be on the first lunar mission.
Five days before the hearing, while the Space Council met to discuss the ramifications of a lunar-orbit rendezvous on NASA’s growth over the rest of the decade, Jackie got another note from Richard P. Hines’s office. Victor Anfuso knew Jackie was chairing a meeting of the National Aeronautical Association
at the same time the hearing was scheduled to begin but wanted her to present her testimony in person. He asked that she arrive around 11:15; this would put her arrival after Jerrie and Janey had both testified and should hopefully give her enough time for her NAA meeting beforehand. The note asked, finally, that she call Victor directly to touch base about her testimony.
Two days before the hearing, Jerrie arrived in Washington alone. While some of the other women tested lived close to her, and though she had plenty of room in her plane, she hadn’t picked anyone up, hadn’t asked them to sit in as witnesses, or even invited them to submit a statement or opinion for inclusion in the official record. She and Janey had decided they would speak on behalf of the group. Neither gave any thought to the fact that they might be ignoring the other women’s perspectives.
The day before the hearing, Jackie arrived in Washington. From her hotel suite, she called Victor Anfuso to confirm her testimony. She also called Randy one last time to make sure that he hadn’t changed his feeling on women astronauts. He hadn’t. Her due diligence done, Jackie prepared to present her unchanged testimony the following morning.
Chapter 22
Washington, DC, Tuesday, July 17, 1962
It was already warm and humid when Jerrie arrived at the New House Office Building a little before ten o’clock. She was dressed in a short-sleeved, button-down black dress cinched at the waist with a black-and-white belt and modest black pumps, fitting for both the event and the weather. Her hair was styled in her favored ponytail with some softness in the front. She went inside and found a mix of congressional representatives, journalists, stenographers, NASA brass, and curious onlookers milling around in the hallway outside Committee Hearing Room B-214. They were all there for the subcommittee hearing on the qualifications of astronauts. Jerrie looked around and saw some familiar faces. Her friend Jane Rieker from LIFE magazine was there, as was Cathryn Walters from Dr. Jay Shurley’s office. But it was Janey whom Jerrie was happiest to find, dressed similarly conservatively with her pilot’s lapsed-time chronometer on one wrist and a delicate gold bracelet on the other.
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