by Buzz Aldrin
Shortly after I returned from the Soviet Union, I received a call from David Duclon, one of the creators of a popular NBC sitcom, Punky Brewster. As he had watched the news coverage of the Challenger accident, David wondered how children might be affected who had witnessed the tragedy. Then he heard the next day that his real-life star, Soleil Moon Frye, who played Punky, had dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but, because of the tragedy, had decided to rule out that possibility. That got Duclon thinking about an episode that might help kids all over the country work through similar fears.
Would I be willing to come on the show, Duclon wondered, and help Punky resolve some of her anxiety, and thus hopefully restore an interest in space for some of America’s kids? It was an offer I could not possibly turn down.
Working with the advice of several child psychologists, Duclon carefully crafted a story that began with Punky writing in her diary about what she had learned from the space-shuttle accident. Then, through flashbacks, the audience discovers how she came to that understanding—starting several days before the liftoff and then skipping ahead to that afternoon, when Punky comes home from school to talk about the tragedy with Henry (George Gaynes), her foster father. My role was simple: I just had to be myself, as I explained to Punky that all great explorers take risks, but the rewards are worth it. We talked about her desire to be an astronaut, and I encouraged her to pursue her goals. The episode also gave me a chance to get in a plug for the Young Astronauts program, which I had strongly supported since its inception. The show was one of the most widely watched in the short-lived sitcom’s run, but it did not prevent NBC from canceling the series the following season. I’m sure it can still be found in reruns around the world.
IN THE MIDST of the flurry of activity in 1986, I again raised with Lois the issue of our relationship. “I think we should only go out with each other,” I suggested. Lois was glad to date me, but remained cautious.
One day in August, Lois and I hopped in my red Mercedes-Benz convertible and headed from Laguna to Los Angeles along one of the most scenic roads in America, the twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway, PCH 1. With the wind blowing in our hair, the blue sky above us, and the blue water to our left, I said, “You know, I’m wearing this male West Point ring, but there’s a female version of the ring. Do you think you might like one?” I kept my eyes glued to the road as I drove.
Lois glanced at my bulky West Point ring, and replied noncommittally “Oh, I might like that.”
Still driving and looking straight ahead, I said, “And I thought, for a wedding ring, I might get you a moon rock.” I still didn’t look at her, but I could almost feel my eyes twinkling.
“A wedding ring, Buzz?” Lois repeated. “Does that mean … wedding? Are you talking about a wedding?”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” I turned and looked at Lois. “Would that be exclusive enough?”
“Yes, absolutely!” Lois affirmed. “I think I’d like that.” I could tell that despite my awkward proposal of marriage, Lois was thrilled, although she was still somewhat careful about how she responded.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s plan to get married.”
“Well, let’s not tell anybody right away,” Lois suggested. “Not until we are sure we really want to do this.”
I just smiled. I realized that Lois was thinking that I might back out, and she did not want to be embarrassed publicly. After all, even my friends had told her that I was a ladies’ man.
Lois took her time thinking through the matter, and even sought the advice of her dear friend, Sandra Day O’Connor. “Sandra, Buzz Aldrin has asked me to marry him!” Lois confided. “What do you think?”
“I think that is marvelous!” Sandra responded without hesitation. “Buzz is a wonderful man, a true American hero.” Sandra’s approval of me eased Lois’s mind, but she proceeded cautiously nonetheless.
Slowly, over the next few weeks, I convinced Lois that I was sincere. That fall, we attended Lois’s Stanford class reunion. Worried that I would become dismayed and call everything off, she still did not want to reveal our engagement to anyone. And she wasn’t quite sure how I would react if I knew her real age beneath all that youthful beauty. While in her early thirties, Lois’s chestnut brown hair had suddenly and inexplicably turned a striking silver gray. Over the years, it continued to lighten, and from then on she became known as a platinum blonde, even though she never colored her hair in any way. Her hair made guessing her age difficult. As we walked the campus grounds through the many reunion gatherings, several friends waved and called out to Lois from the Class of ′61 tent. As we started mingling, Lois said casually, “Well, here we are.”
We socialized with many red-clad alumni, some of whom were from Lois’s Southern California circle of friends, and realizing the kickoff time for the football game was closing in, I said, “Lois, hadn’t we better head over to your reunion tent?”
“Buzz, how did you find out my age?” Lois asked in amazement.
“I looked at your driver’s license quite some time ago.”
We headed over to the tent for the Class of ′51, where I met many of Lois’s actual classmates, and we had a ball. Of course none of them could quite keep up with her energy.
When Lois and I first got together, I was still working as a consultant for SAIC, although I rarely went in to the office. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I didn’t need a lot. Other than my condo payment, I was debt-free. I did, however, need a challenge to keep my mind occupied. When I visited Lois’s family at their home in Paradise Valley, outside Phoenix, it was obvious to me that Lois came from an affluent family, although I had no idea just how wealthy her family was until after we were married. Nevertheless, if I had any doubts, when we stopped by her family’s corporate headquarters building, they were dispelled.
At Thanksgiving in 1986, Lois and I announced our engagement at a small private party for family and close friends at the Wrigley Mansion, set upon a hill just above the new corporate headquarters office building of Western Savings in Phoenix. Lois’s family had recently acquired the mansion, under the Western Savings umbrella, to hold conferences and other events.
Then, early in December, Lois’s family hosted a grand engagement party for us at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel. We sent out invitations with a picture of the moon, inviting friends to help us celebrate the launching of a “galactic adventure.” Since we hadn’t as yet set a date for our wedding, we included a note on the announcement: “Terminal phase intercept is pending further event sequencing.” When Lois’s father stood to welcome everyone, he joked, “I see Lois has four hundred of her favorite friends here!” His estimate was right on target. Lois’s dad went on to announce our engagement, and that’s when the party kicked into high gear.
People magazine picked up the story of our engagement, and included my whimsical suggestion that Lois’s engagement ring include a moon rock. While it made for a nice story, the truth was, all moon rocks were government property. For me to have possessed a moon rock, even a sliver or a chunk large enough for an engagement ring, would have been illegal. Following the People story, I spent several months trying to convince Federal officials that I did not possess any lunar material, that I had actually presented my bride-to-be with a diamond engagement ring. When people asked to look at her “moon rock” ring, Lois would show the ring and say, “Well, don’t you know, the moon is made of diamonds.”
Originally, I suggested that we get married on Valentine’s Day 1987, but Lois balked. “Oh, I can’t pull together a wedding in two months’ time!” she said. “We’ll have to wait a year, then.”
“Okay,” I said. “In that case, I’m going to move in with you.”
“Oh no!” Lois cried. “We can’t do that.” I kissed Lois passionately.
I moved in with Lois at her cozy but elegant home overlooking the crystal blue ocean of Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach a few days after Christmas.
14 This quote is docum
ented on Bill Haynes’s personal home movie video of this trip. The interview is with an unidentified German reporter.
15
EVERY SUPERMAN
NEEDS HIS LOIS
FOR THE NEXT YEAR, THE FUEL OF LOVE WAS PRETTY MUCH sending Lois and me into the stratosphere, as we dashed from one event to another, not to mention planning for our wedding.
Amid our activities, I continued to ponder my designs and strategies for space exploration, and kept returning to my Mars Cycler. I could see the spaceship with its trusswork connecting two pyramid-shaped crew modules at either end, spinning around its midpoint to create an artificial gravity environment, and carrying the first humans from Earth to Mars along a pathway of elliptical orbits. I took out my graph paper to chart the most efficient orbital trajectories between these two moving planetary bodies, so the trip could be made with as little fuel as possible, relying on the gravitational forces of the two planets to sustain the orbits.
In July, I headed up to the Rocky Mountains to participate in the “Case for Mars III” conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder where a live satellite link created a “spacebridge” to a group of Soviet scientists in Moscow. The idea being explored was whether the United States and the Soviet Union might go “To Mars Together?” and whether it should be a manned or robotic mission. Former NASA administrator Tom Paine and Cornell University professor Carl Sagan, who popularized science with his TV show in the 1980s and later wrote the book Contact, joined me on the five-man panel, and over the course of four hours we dropped any political differences we might have had with the Soviet Union as a nation, and focused on science. We all agreed that Mars was mankind’s next destination, but we also knew it was a question of national priorities, and ultimately a question of cost. I knew the United States had the technical capability, and that we could most likely overcome our ideological differences with the Soviets. But I knew there was little hope of such a joint venture without the will of the people to move it forward. As it turned out, the U.S. Soviet venture never materialized, and it wasn’t until nearly ten years later that NASA sent the Mars Pathfinder on its first robotic landing mission.
Besides a few attentive ears at JPL for my cycler concepts, not too many in the space community were seriously interested in planning human missions to our red neighbor. America didn’t even have a space station yet, so it looked as though bringing my ideas to fruition might be many years off into the future. Every so often, when these realizations sank in deeper and deeper, I could feel myself losing a sense of what I was shooting for, and how to make it feasible. Without a solid track to move forward on, it seemed I had nothing to do, no real purpose to my efforts, no hope of seeing them realized. The dark mood that I had periodically struggled with over the years reared its ugly head at a very inappropriate time.
Lois had seen a bit of my downside while with me in Hawaii, but after I took up residence with her in Laguna Beach, she got the true, full picture. There I was, with the woman of my dreams, in the beautiful surroundings of her warm and inviting home. And yet I could not find a reason to charge ahead in my normal activities. Mostly I did a lot of catching up on CNN and other cable news programs, getting some serious shut-eye, or reading the space journals to which I subscribed. Somehow I felt I needed to extricate myself from the demands of the world, and on those days I did not want to attend the evening social events with Lois that we had been invited to. On other occasions I went along with her, but I felt subdued and out of place, trying to fit in with the cocktail banter.
Once a reporter came all the way from Spain to do a magazine interview with me, but it was one of those periods where the last thing I wanted was to share myself with the world. I decided I wasn’t going to do the interview. I stayed in the bedroom, while Lois talked with the reporter in the living room, but I never came out even to say hello. Lois made excuses as long as she could, but after a while it was pointless, so the reporter interviewed Lois instead. Actually, Lois gave a pretty great interview on my behalf.
Although Lois had read Return to Earth, in which I revealed the medical saga I had experienced prior to meeting her, she refused to see me as a depressed person. She simply didn’t believe in it. Instead, she viewed my depression as the result of discouragement and disappointment, a lack of confidence in myself, and the lack of a good cheerleader to keep me going. So she began a one-woman crusade to remind me on a daily basis what a good man I was. At first I didn’t believe her for a minute, convinced that my down times were beyond my ability to surmount until they gradually dissipated on their own. But I enjoyed hearing what she had to say. Slowly, very slowly, her words began to sink in and have an effect, not just in helping to change my attitude about the blue funk, but often in avoiding it altogether.
Lois loved to look over my shoulder as I spread out my notes on the kitchen table and drew my orbital trajectory sketches of the Aldrin Mars Cycler. To a non-rocketeer my schematics must have appeared more like an abstract pattern of undulating waves intersecting one another in crazy-eight patterns. But she’d exclaim, “Oh, Buzz, tell me about that!” She was loaded with questions, and I enjoyed teaching her about space. Lois had deliberately avoided taking science, math, and astronomy courses at Stanford, thinking that she would never need them in her life. How wrong she was! When we went out on the deck at night and looked at the moon and the stars, she would hardly let go of me, asking me a thousand questions. I enjoyed teaching her about the various constellations and features of the moon, such as the time it takes to reach the moon if you are traveling at the speed of light. About one second!
We spent long hours just walking on Emerald Bay’s smooth, sandy beach that stretched more than half a mile between the cliffs that rose up like protective fortresses at either end, and enjoying our togetherness. We watched the sunsets and the phases of the moon. Lois often spent much of her day throwing her positive energy in my direction to make me feel better. She wrote page after page of notes to me, reminding me of all the great things I had going for myself. She quit playing her daily tennis games at the Balboa Bay Club, so she could spend more time encouraging me. She even cut back on many of her favorite social events to care for me, and to do all she could to help lift me out of the doldrums. With irrepressible vigor, she reinforced the feeling that I should be proud of my past accomplishments, and take life as it unfolded.
Lois never wavered in her love for me. That is one of the most stunningly beautiful parts of her character. She was committed to helping me beat depression rather than succumb to it. She made a conscious decision that no matter whether I expressed my love to her adequately or not, she chose to concentrate on loving me. Concentrate on that which you are in control of, she told herself, rather than that which you are not. She had a boundless well to draw from, and the waters were healing.
Prior to our engagement, I had been seeing a psychologist in Orange County from time to time. Lois wanted to meet with the psychologist, too, to learn how to better help me cope with the depression that still haunted me occasionally. After several months of sessions, however, we both felt that we were spinning our wheels. “Buzz, the medicines these doctors are prescribing are not helping you,” Lois told me. “You don’t need them. All you need to do is believe in yourself.” Lois encouraged me to go without the pills, and she was right. I did just as well without them. My physical system seemed somewhat immune to the medication, anyhow. We realized that we were each other’s best support to figure out our problems, and we’ve never seen a psychologist since.
Lois took me on as her one-person challenge to rebuild my sense of self. Whenever I got down on myself, she wrote more notes to me, page after page, telling me how brilliant, physically attractive, creative, and innovative I was, and how I had so much to offer not just to her but to the world. Sometimes I read her notes, but more often I cast them off, not willing to think of myself in such positive, glowing terms. When Lois realized that I wasn’t reading all that she had written about me, she sat close to
me and read her notes aloud, reminding me of all the good things I had going for myself. In the process, she was rebuilding the confidence I had lost along the way.
WE HAD NO financial concerns. I wasn’t working at a regular job, but we didn’t really need any additional money because I received sufficient income from some consulting fees and my Air Force retirement pay to cover my own minimal expenses, and Lois certainly had no need of money, with her net worth in the millions. Although she was worth a fortune, we never even considered preparing a prenuptial agreement. She wasn’t worried about it, and I didn’t care about money. Our only “prenup” was an informal verbal commitment, in which Lois promised to learn how to scuba dive, and I promised to become a good skier. Of course, to Lois that meant that I’d be going out of the gate down a race course! As it turns out, we both held true to our agreements.
At times, Lois would ask me, “How do you feel about us? Do you think our relationship is going to work?” She wasn’t doubting me; she was worried that I might decide against marrying her. I didn’t know how to reassure her any more than I already had, so I simply kept reassuring her. It was probably as serious a statement as a wedding ring when we changed our car license plates. On Lois’s red Porsche we put a plate reading MOONGAL; on my Mercedes the plate read MARSGUY.
