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

by Neal Thompson

  Donald K. Slayton, an Air Force captain known as Deke. Slayton had as much test pilot experience as Shepard, but he’d flown combat missions in World War II. He had big ears and a ruggedly handsome face. He was shy and taciturn, the no-bullshit one of the group. He’d grown up on a Wisconsin farm and would remember the press conference as “the worst stress test I’ve ever been through.”

  The seven men ranged between the ages of thirty-two and thirty-seven, between five foot seven and five foot eleven, between 150 and 180 pounds. Each had a father who had served in the military, although most were also influenced by strong maternal role models. They all had test piloting experience, and all but Shepard had engaged in aerial dogfights against Japanese and/or Korean pilots. All seven were married, with two or three children. The psychiatrists and psychologists noted a few common traits: shades of obsessive-compulsive behavior, an inclination toward action and away from introspection, an off-the-charts exhibition of self-reliance. Together, they were about to soar irretrievably away from their military peers to create their own seven-man fraternity—and a whole new brand of cold war celebrity.

  “The nation’s Mercury astronauts,” the NASA man said after announcing the seven astronauts’ names. Those who weren’t already standing rose to their feet in ovation. After the applause died down, the NASA guy said, “Take your pictures as you will, gentlemen,” and the crowd surged forward, elbowing and nudging each other for position. Shepard muttered to Schirra, “I can’t believe this. These people are nuts.”

  For nearly two hours the reporters grilled them. Each man would lean forward on an elbow and speak into the microphone placed before him. The first question out of the box was among the least expected. What did their “good lady” think? As if that had ever been a real consideration, Slayton thought, and his response was just as brusque: “What I do is pretty much my business, profession-wise.” Shepard told the questioner, “I have no problems at home.”

  With that, as with most of the day’s questions, the most eloquent of them all was Glenn. In response to the “good lady” question, he said, “I don’t think any of us could really go on with something like this if we didn’t have pretty good backing at home.”

  Shepard, his close-cropped hair accentuating his widow’s peak, handled most of his responses seriously but briefly. He came across sounding professional and self-assured, well spoken if not very affable. A couple of the others, particularly Grissom and Cooper, fared worse. Cooper, the Oklahoman, confessed in a quiet twang that he felt at a “disadvantage to have to speak loud.” And when Grissom was asked about the worst and most stressful part of the candidate selection program, he told reporters, “This is the worst, here.”

  Glenn, meanwhile, got the highest marks and the biggest laugh of the day when he responded to a question about which of the medical tests he liked least. “They went into every opening on the human body just as far as they could go,” he said, alluding to the “steel eel.” “Which one do you think you would enjoy the least?” Shepard had to admit Glenn handled that one “pretty well,” and must have realized at that moment that he needed to start working on his media relations if he wanted to compete with the likes of the garrulous Glenn.

  Cooper, probably the most gung-ho pilot of the group, sat wondering where all the questions about flying and space had gone. Then one of the reporters tossed off another unexpected— and, to them, irrelevant—query: What was their “sustaining faith”? Cooper felt as if Glenn “had been waiting for the religion question all along.” The others were amazed at Glenn’s unscripted reply. Whereas the rest offered no more than a dozen or so words about their faith, Glenn spoke with unabashed sincerity and eloquence about heaven, family, and teaching Sunday school, more than four hundred words on destiny, the Wright brothers, and “a power greater than any of us.” “We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities,” Glenn said. “It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can.” Slayton said later that John Glenn “ate this stuff up.” “We all looked at him, then at each other,” Deke said.

  Grissom’s response to the religion question made a few of the others cringe. “I am not real active in church, as Mr. Glenn is,” Gus said. And Shepard’s response wasn’t much more profound. In military style, he stuck to the facts: “I am not a member of any church. I attend the Christian Science Church regularly.”

  Later, they’d all realize that the competition among the seven of them—Schirra called it “the seven-sided coin of competition”—began with that afternoon’s Q-and-A. And Glenn, with his eloquence and his responses that were ten times longer and more detailed than those of the other six, had taken an early lead. Glenn would say many years later that his exposure to the media prior to that press conference—interviews he faced after a record-breaking supersonic cross-country flight in 1957 and, subsequent to that, a guest appearance on the Name That Tune TV show—had given him the confidence to have “a little more to say” than the others. But he also realized that his loquaciousness had cost him points among his new peers.

  “Somehow, without intending to, I found myself speaking for the group,” he’d write in an autobiography. “I’d probably said too much [and] marked myself among my new colleagues as not being laid back and cool, the way test pilots are supposed to be.” Indeed, Cooper recalls thinking: Who is this Boy Scout?

  The press conference ended, and the reporters scattered to file their stories. Shepard—whom the writers would describe as “imperturbable”—turned to Deke and told him, “There’s nothing on your tie, Slayton—gotcha.” Slayton laughed, but behind the smiles they all shared with the cameras and each other was a realization that they’d just entered a brand-new game.

  One writer would describe them as “square-jawed trim halfbacks recruited from an All-American football team.” Another said they bore little “resemblance to humdrum Average Man.” Others hailed the “virile” new “space voyagers”—“daring and courageous.” Only a few quietly reminded readers that these were “military pilots” and, so far, premature heroes. Even though the public affairs guy had warned the new astronauts about the deep probe of the press, not even Glenn, the savviest of them all, was prepared for what was to come. “Not one of us knew what he was in for,” Glenn would recall.

  At the time, all they had done was volunteer for some creepy tests and pose for some embarrassing pictures. But in the weeks and months to come, the seven would be praised as heroic cold warriors, the men who would help battle the evil Soviet empire and then claim the sky above for democracy. The aviators must have realized at some point that the instant fame had nothing to do with them directly. A nation of frightened citizens wanted desperately to latch on to some tangible evidence of America’s technical determination and superiority. They wanted the astronauts to be supermen.

  That hunger for supermen could be seen in the astromania to come: the astronaut dolls, the rock songs (one California surf band called itself the Astronauts), and television shows and novels about astronauts and space. But there was more than just a cold war need for personified symbols of America’s superiority. The nation also sought a new type of male role model. Not the Father Knows Best brand, but the Elvis Presley brand. And the astronauts were perfect specimens of what Norman Mailer called “the white Negro.” In a 1959 essay of the same name, Mailer praised this new kind of male hipster, the guy who knew how to “follow the rebellious imperative of the self” and, instead of “the single mate, the solid family, and the respectable love life,” pursued a life of “Saturday night kicks.”

  Schirra would later write: “We were seven veteran test pilots but unsophisticated in many ways, not very well prepared for the sudden fame of being America’s first astronauts. We were small-town boys . . . only John Glenn had known fame.” Equally unprepared were the families.

  On the day of the press conference Louise had decided to get out of the house. She took the girls to the beach near their house in Virginia Beach, where they had mov
ed after Shepard had completed his year at the Naval War College. It was a chilly, blustery day, but she didn’t want to be at home. Actually, she had wanted to be in Washington with Alan, but wives were not invited. As the girls played in the sand, she watched as two men bundled up in coats walked down the beach toward them. “Mrs. Shepard?” they said. “We’re from Life magazine. We’d like to take some pictures.”

  Seven crews of photographers had been given orders to track down each of the astronauts’ families, to photograph the wives, the kids, the house, the dogs, and so on. Louise agreed to stand for a few awkward pictures, then abruptly turned away and called to the girls. “It’s time to go,” she said. She was relieved when she pulled away and headed toward home, thinking she’d made an escape. Then she ran smack into the blunt reality of instant fame. The house was surrounded by cameramen, photographers, and journalists wielding notepads and tape recorders. Vans lined the streets.

  Louise gasped. “This can’t be,” she said out loud. One of the girls asked, “Mom, what is all this?” As Louise edged into the driveway, the media parted for her. She told the girls to “stay close to me.” The attack was immediate. They lobbed questions like grenades. “How does it feel to be the wife of an astronaut?” “How long have you been married?” “Do you really want him to go?” “Are you worried he’ll be killed?”

  The last of those questions was repeated a few times, and it bothered Louise, who told the girls to get back in the car while she stood answering questions politely but concisely. She smiled a lot, tried to stay calm, and even let a photographer pose her in front of their mailbox at 109 Brandon Road. That picture ran in newspapers across the country the next day—and hundreds of letters from strangers followed. And, unexpectedly, so did a surprising amount of cash.

  A few months after that first press conference, Leo D’Orsey, a pudgy, affable, well-dressed Washington tax lawyer who was president of the Washington Redskins football team and who represented sports figures and celebrities such as Arthur Godfrey, tapped on his water glass and cleared his throat, announcing his wish to discuss “our relationship.” The astronauts and a few NASA officials had just finished a huge dinner and were sipping coffee and picking at dessert. They’d been invited to a private room at D’Orsey’s suburban D.C. country club to discuss D’Orsey’s offer to act as the astronauts’ lawyer and agent. John Glenn nudged Shepard, and the two joked about whether D’Orsey would ask for a 20 percent or 30 percent cut of their income.

  “I insist on only two conditions,” D’Orsey finally said. “One, I will accept no fee. Two, I will not be reimbursed for any expenses I incur representing you.” The astronauts were dumbstruck. Then D’Orsey hit them with the real bombshell. According to an internal NASA memo that worked its way up to Eisenhower’s desk, the Mercury astronauts would be free “to make any agreement they see fit for the sale of their personal stories.” Walt Williams, chosen to head the program that NASA was calling Project Mercury, had anticipated the media’s love affair with the new spacemen and didn’t want them “nibbled to death by ducks.” Therefore, while official NASA information would be shared equally with the media, access to the astronauts’ personal lives was put up for sale, available to the highest bidder.

  Walt Bonney, NASA’s public affairs officer, had put out some feelers to news publications, asking them to make an offer on exclusive rights to the astronauts’ stories. It wasn’t a new idea. The New York Times had paid for Lindbergh’s story in 1927, and even Eisenhower had been paid to tell about his World War II exploits. But this would be the first of many controversies surrounding the astronauts’ unprecedented status.

  The starting point for the auction would be $500,000. D’Orsey told the astronauts that night that they’d divide the cash over three years if they decided to sign the contract. D’Orsey finished explaining the offer and then sat down. A quick calculation told the men that they’d each get $24,000 a year over the three years. For most of them, that was double their annual military salary. One by one the astronauts began grinning. Then Leo grinned. And then the whole table busted out laughing. A few weeks later Life made the sole bid. Life’s offer wouldn’t be revealed publicly for another two years, but they agreed to pay the full $500,000.

  Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, who had founded and edited Life, considered it among his civic duties to promote the masculine heft of his country. Luce had once said that his “mission” for the magazine was “to see life, to see the world, to eyewitness great events . . . to see strange things—machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon.” He considered himself the portrayer of what he called the “American century,” and for prime ownership of the story of the century, $500,000 was a bargain. Alan and Louise would immediately invest their cut, a start toward the life of wealth they’d one day enjoy. Alan would, from that day forth, rely on D’Orsey—“a tremendous guy . . . a very close personal friend”—for financial advice.

  Life announced its purchase in a two-page spread on August 24, 1959. Beneath a photograph of the seven, the cut line read: “When one of these men becomes America’s first space man, you will read his personal story. And, furthermore: the lives that these seven men—and their wives—will lead between now and the day on which one of them becomes the first American— perhaps the first being—to orbit into outer space will in itself be one of the most absorbing, dramatic, human stories of our time.”

  Of course, Life wouldn’t get close to the real story—it probably wasn’t interested in the real story. Or when the writers did get close, they were careful not to write all they saw and the photographers would look the other way. Cooper’s marriage, for example, was falling apart at the time. He and his wife had been separated, yet Trudy Cooper wrote a story for Life—“having my husband become an astronaut hasn’t wrought any great change in our lives”— and posed like a pro with the other astronauts’ wives. Gordon Cooper admitted years later that he and his wife “would both struggle with the ‘happily married’ illusion through the years.”

  Unflattering details of Shepard’s life story would also remain unexplored. Not a single word would appear in any publication about his near expulsion from the Naval Academy, his flat-hatting a crowded beach, or his near court-martial at Patuxent River.

  Henry Luce believed that the psychological battleground of the cold war was no place for anti-American stories, a belief reflected in the semi propagandistic stories of not only Life magazine but other publications in his empire: pro-American Time, pro-male Sports Illustrated, and pro-money Fortune. At a time of rampant national fears about a wily communist foe, reporters considered themselves duty bound to be accommodating and nationalistic. Life called its astronaut stories accounts of an “epochal mission” and “man’s greatest adventure.” A conspiracy of hero making had begun.

  The rest of the media spat and hissed about the Life deal. Alfred Friendly, managing editor of the Washington Post, said the astronauts’ story “belongs to the public. It cannot be sold to anyone.” Other journalists complained that the astronauts were getting paid extra for a job that Uncle Sam was already paying them to do, and some writers would snarl that Life had become “NASA’s house organ.” A New York Times editorial writer would begin asking why the astronauts—basically members of the military—deserved perks that others in the Navy, Air Force, and Marines could only dream of. One critic would one day write, “They were heroes not, like Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly across the Atlantic, because they had done something, but because they were confident they would.”

  The astronauts, of course, loved the Life deal. They wouldn’t have to answer the same questions over and over about childhood and “when did you know you wanted to go to space?” The contract would protect not just their privacy but their families’ and would limit the access reporters had to astronauts’ homes, wives, and kids. That part of the deal was particularly appealing to Shepard, who right from the start was wary and distrustful of the press. “I rather enjoyed the insu
lation which they [Life reporters] gave us,” he told an interviewer years later. What Shepard didn’t admit is that he likely had more to hide than the others.

  Even the Life people knew there was something presumptuous about their role. “We made them heroes, the first day they were picked,” said Ralph Morse, a well-respected Life photographer who would become the magazine’s lead shooter during the early years, and a close friend of the astronauts. “And they hadn’t done a damn thing.” Nonetheless, most of the nation couldn’t read or watch enough about them. And if President Eisenhower and the military men of the Pentagon ever fretted about spending so much money on the space race, the calming effect that the astronaut stories had on a country anxious about the cold war must have eased their concerns at least a bit.

  Another benefit of the Life deal was that the writers— Loudon Wainwright, Don Schanche, and John Dille—helped ghost-write the astronauts’ “first-person” articles. Most of the seven especially liked Wainwright, who “had a way of putting words in our mouths that we wish we’d had sense enough to say,” Glenn said years later.

  The September 14, 1959, issue contained eighteen pages on the astronauts. Under the headline “Ready to Make History,” the stories kicked off a decade of Life’s exclusive access to the homogenized, whitewashed versions of the astronauts’ home life. “In spite of their extraordinary qualifications, the Astronauts have many of the preoccupations of more ordinary men,” the inaugural article said. “They are concerned about the condition of the grass in their yards and proper schooling for their children.”