Credit: Lovell
For the next two years Lovell studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, renting a room in a nearby family’s house. And each weekend, Marilyn came by bus from Milwaukee to visit, staying in Jim’s room while he moved to a YMCA near the campus.
At his mother’s insistence, however, Jim applied a second time to the Naval Academy. She was afraid that when he went overseas as a midshipmen after his second year of college he would get caught in an overseas military action, and be unable to return to school for years afterward. He took her advice, and to his surprise this time he was accepted.
Blanch’s foresight was almost clairvoyant. All of Jim’s Holloway classmates ended up in Korea. Years would pass before they could complete their educations.
Lovell moved east, starting college all over again at Annapolis. By this time Marilyn was also going to college on a scholarship at Milwaukee State Teachers College. When Jim headed to Maryland, he asked her to come east as well.
Marilyn had no doubt what she wanted to do. She gave up her scholarship, transferred to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and got a part time job in an up-scale department store in Washington, selling woman’s clothing.
She also typed Jim’s school papers, including an astonishing twenty-four- page term paper on “The Development of the Liquid-Fuel Rocket.” In this essay Jim described the early history of rocketry in the United States and Germany. He concluded enthusiastically that “The big day for rockets is still coming--the day when science will have advanced to the stage when flight into space is a reality and not a dream.”39 As she typed, Marilyn couldn’t help feeling amused. “It seemed so farfetched,” she later said.
They spent as much of their free time as possible together. Every Friday she traveled down to Annapolis, stayed with a local family, and joined Jim for the weekend socials.
And yet, while they had talked about marriage, Jim hadn’t yet proposed, nor had they made any detailed plans about their future.
At the end of junior year the Academy held what was called the Ring Dance. At this formal ritual, the midshipmen received their class ring with the crests of both the Navel Academy and their graduating class embossed upon it. Should a midshipman be engaged at the time, his fiancee would be given a miniature of the ring at the same dance. During most of the dance the husband- to-be kept her ring in his pocket, while she wore his on a blue and gold ribbon around her neck.
At the center of the dance floor a short ramp led to a giant replica of the class ring, big enough for a couple to stand under. As the young couples danced, one-by-one they picked the moment to exchange rings. The couples dipped their engagement rings in a large bowl containing water from the seven seas, then walked together up the ramp and under the ring. There they placed the rings on each other’s fingers, kissed, and thus became officially engaged.
By June of Jim’s sophomore year he needed to pick out the style of ring he wanted. One weekend, Marilyn and Jim went to a jewelry store to look over the selection. As they both eyed the many styles, which included both the men’s full size and the women’s corresponding miniature, Jim Lovell nonchalantly indicated the miniature rack and said, “Well, which one would you like?”
Marilyn looked at him, a bit bewildered. “You mean you want me to have one of these?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “Which style do you like?”
Rather than commenting on his unorthodox proposal of marriage, Marilyn merely looked at the selection, and made her choice.
* * *
Then came the night in 1955, when Marilyn was back in California with their first two children, and Jim was sitting in the cockpit of his fighter jet, desperately trying to find his way back to the aircraft carrier.
After graduation and marriage, he had been assigned to a Pacific aircraft carrier group, training to fly jets at night. Though they never saw any MIGs, he and his squadron flew patrols and practiced night flying and night landings on their aircraft carrier. They also developed flying techniques for releasing their nuclear bombs and getting away as fast as possible.
And above all, they stayed prepared, ready to drop atomic weapons on their assigned targets in China and the Soviet Union should a nuclear attack be attempted against the United States.
The original plan this night had been for Lovell and three other planes to take off, fly at 30,000 feet for ninety minutes, lock onto a radio signal beamed from the carrier, and use this to rendezvous at 1,500 feet above the carrier deck. They’d then bring their planes home, one by one.
Lovell took off without problems, but after that nothing went right. First, the clouds rolled in, the fourth plane’s take-off was aborted, and the ship told the pilots already in the air to forego flying at 30,000 feet and to return to formation at 1,500 feet. Locking onto the radio signal, Lovell began flying in the direction indicated. What he didn’t know was that his instruments had locked onto a radio signal transmitted on the same frequency from an air base in Japan seventy miles away. As the other two pilots linked up over the carrier, Lovell found himself alone, gliding over the choppy waves of the Pacific ocean. And nowhere below him could he see the carrier.
Well, he thought, things could be worse. He swung his plane around and backtracked, scanning the ocean for any telltale sign of the aircraft carrier.
At this moment things got worse. In his youthful enthusiasm to improve his country’s flying equipment, Lovell had improvised a small additional light for reading the tiny numbers printed on a reference card strapped to his lower leg. He now decided to turn this light on, and as planned, he plugged it into the instrument panel and flipped the switch.
Instantly he shorted out every light in his instrument panel. Now the inside of Lovell’s cockpit was as dark as the outside.
Desperately he felt for a small penlight. Sticking it in his mouth, this was now all he had to illuminate his instruments. He could get his readings, one dial at a time, but it involved using one hand when he needed both to fly.
He turned the penlight off, having no idea what to do. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, however, he suddenly realized that he could see more details of the ocean surface. Below him was a faint greenish streak trailing out across the inky waves. As the carrier plowed its way through the ocean it churned up phosphorescent algae, illuminating the ship’s wake in a dim gleam. By aiming for the head of the green wake, Lovell finally found his fellow wingmen. All three planes were once again together, circling above the carrier.
Now came the really hard part. Somehow, Lovell was going to have to land his plane on the tiny aircraft carrier deck while holding a penlight in his mouth.
He listened to the radio as the two other planes dropped to the carrier deck, snapping to a halt as the cables grabbed their tailhooks.
Now it was his turn. In order to hit the deck safely, he had to carefully lower his altitude from 250 to 150 feet just before he crossed over the deck.
In order to do that, however, he needed to read his instrument panel, and in order to do that, Lovell had to hold his penlight with his teeth while his hands flew the plane.
His first attempt almost rammed the side of the aircraft carrier. “Pull up, November Papa One, pull up!” the landing officer screamed at him. “You’re way too low!” Suddenly Lovell saw the side of the carrier loom up like a wall. With a desperate pull on the stick he ripped his plane away, barely missing the deck as he shrieked upward.
On his second attempt, Lovell decided that rather than risk a collision with the ship, he would drop down from 500 feet. With the ship screaming at him to lower his altitude, he cut his engines and plummeted like a rock towards that tiny carrier deck. Hitting the surface with a horrible thud, Lovell’s plane bounced once, blew two tires, and then screeched to a jarring halt as the deck cables grabbed his tailhook.
When the first deck crewman opened his hatch, he looked at Lovell and calmly said, “Glad to see you decided to come back aboard.”
L
ovell found it hard to speak. “Yeah. Glad to be back.”40
ANDERS
The horn went off suddenly, wailing a loud banshee cry throughout Keflavik Air Force Base. First Lieutenant Bill Anders and his radar operator had five minutes to get their plane skyborne, and all around him men climbed into battle array in anticipation of armed attack.
Radar had picked up an unidentified airplane approaching Iceland from the northeast, apparently coming from the Soviet Union and heading right towards what military people called the Air Defense Identification Zone. This zone, surrounding Iceland, was considered sovereign territory, and any intrusion by an unauthorized airplane could be considered an act of war.
Anders sprinted into the hangar, strapped his lifejacket on, and climbed into his cockpit. Gunning the engines of his F-89 Scorpion interceptor jet, now armed with over one hundred missiles, he pulled out onto the runway and screeched into the air.
The year was 1958, and it was Bill Anders’s job to identify that unknown plane coming out of Soviet Russia and to destroy it if it had hostile intentions.
Born in Hong Kong to a Navy officer and a daughter of a Daughter of the American Revolution, Bill Anders had always been attracted to adventure and excitement. When he was four years old, his father had been assigned to the U.S.S. Panay, an American patrol boat policing the Yangtze River of China. As Arthur Anders patrolled the river, Muriel Anders and Bill would follow on shore, moving from city to city.
When the Japanese attacked Nanking, China in 1937, sinking the Panay, Muriel and Bill had to flee for their lives. The four-year-old was pulled from his bed to stand on a rickety wooden porch and watch bombs crash down several hundred yards from their hotel in Canton. He tried to run toward the explosions, but his mother grabbed him. The two soon boarded a steamer and slipped out to Hong Kong and on to the Philippines.
Lt. Arthur Anders, meanwhile, had also managed to escape. During the attack he had been forced to take command when the captain was badly injured. Anders, wounded in the throat and unable to talk, issued commands by writing them in pencil and even his own blood. No match for the Japanese, he refused to surrender, and ordered the crew to fight back. As the Panay sank, they fled with their wounded to shore and into the Chinese countryside, eventually escaping to Hankow. For his heroism Arthur Anders received the Navy Cross.41
The family returned to the States, where most of Bill Anders’s youth was spent in San Diego. As he grew, the boy was attracted to science and engineering, but thought little about what he would do with his life. A soft- spoken man with a serious and proper demeanor, he hadn’t developed a passionate interest in flying or rockets, like Lovell or Borman. All he knew was that he didn’t want to do anything boring, and that whatever he did should conform to what he thought was right. Because his father had been a decorated Navy officer, and because his parents very much wanted him to join the Navy, he entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis In 1951. As a teenager Anders just assumed he’d become a ship’s captain like his father.
It wasn’t long, however, before Anders had second thoughts about spending the rest of his life on a ship. Each summer the academy sent the midshipmen off on what they called “cruises,” joining a ship’s crew at sea for several weeks in order to learn the ropes. In the summer of his first year Anders was assigned to a destroyer.
Always wanting to make the right impression, Anders put on his cleanest Navy whites and showed up about an hour and a half early. The officer of the deck checked him in, and told him to go to the stern and wait to be called.
Anders strolled to the stern of the ship, gazing at the ship’s huge guns and armor. Suddenly he heard a loud hissing behind him, and he turned to see the ship’s smokestack belch out a big black cloud of thick soot. He watched fascinated. Then he looked down and saw that his clothes were speckled with many many tiny bits of soot. Instinctively he brushed at them, and smeared the whole front of his whites. When a few minutes later he found himself being harshly chewed out for wearing a dirty uniform, the midshipman began to wonder at the justice of the Navy.
On the same cruise Anders attached himself to the ship’s engine room chief, determined to learn all he could about maintaining a ship’s machinery. A straight arrow who was generally uninterested in the typical shore activities of his fellow midshipmen, Anders would often forgo his leave to work with the chief. After several weeks of hard work, Anders had done so well that the chief put him in charge of the ship’s throttle.
Then, with only ten minutes left on Anders’ last engine room watch, the chief suddenly spoke up. “Mr. Anders, you’re doing a good job. How’d you like a cup of coffee?”
Everyone in the engine room froze. A chief was in many ways the king of the engine room, the undisputed ruler of his realm. For him to offer midshipman Bill Anders a cup of coffee was to tell the ship that Bill Anders had now been knighted.
Anders nodded, and the chief filled a cup from his homemade jerry- rigged coffee machine and proffered it to Anders. “Here, you’ve earned it.”
Anders, the proud but innocent young eager-beaver, smiled and naïvely asked, “That’s great, chief. Have you got any cream and sugar?”
The chief looked at him in disgust. “Shee-it,” he said, pouring the coffee into the bilge. “You’ll never make it.”
Anders wondered indeed if he could make it. He disliked playing politics, and it seemed that if he didn’t play exactly the right politics at all times his career in the Navy would be difficult at best.
That same summer he went home to San Diego for a short leave, and went on a double date. Bill had had a crush on the younger sister of a high school buddy. Her name was Ann, and she worked as a pantry girl in a restaurant, making salads. Though he asked her for a date several times, she had always refused.
Finally she relented, but only if her brother Frank and another waitress named Valerie came along as well.
The foursome went to the beach. Ann and Frank soon found themselves abandoned while Bill and Valerie frolicked together in the surf.
Nineteen-year-old Bill Anders at that moment decided that he wanted to know more about sixteen-year-old Valerie Hoard. The next day he dressed up in his formal Navy whites and called upon Valerie’s father to ask him if he could date his daughter. Henry “Casey” Hoard, a California highway patrolman, laughed, startled, and told him, “Sure, go ahead, she’s dated every other boy in town.”
Bill only had a few nights before his leave ended. The first night he took Valerie to the Starlight Opera. The next night they went to the Globe Theater to see Shakespeare. Each night he took her home and said goodbye with a handshake.
Valerie was baffled. She asked her mother, “What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t even try to kiss me.” A typical California girl, she was a little taken aback by this serious, formal boy who seemed to approach life so seriously. She was more startled when she began to receive daily letters from him while he was on his summer assignment at sea.
He returned home at Christmas, 1952. Though his mother had arranged for him to attend all the local socials where he could meet the daughters of admirals, he ignored them all to date Valerie night and day.
By now Valerie was fascinated by this interesting guy who wrote long letters about philosophy and what he wanted to do with his life. Just before he left for Annapolis, he gave her a small pin, telling her to wear it as a souvenir.
When she wore it, however, Valerie suddenly discovered that she wasn’t getting her usual number of dates. She hadn’t realized that in a Navy town like San Diego, everyone recognized the pin as Bill’s class crest. Her wearing it was equivalent to her advertising she was unavailable. This is no good, she thought. I’m not having any fun!
So while Bill thought they were going steady, she took the pin off so she could date other boys. Yet the two kept corresponding. By this time, Anders had thought about his future and had made some hard choices. First, he decided that he wanted to switch his commission to the Air Force. Flying combat jets seemed much
more exciting than sitting on a ship.
Second, he decided that he wanted to marry Valerie Hoard. The Ring Dance was coming, and he began a full campaign to convince Valerie to marry him. When he came home that Christmas he drove her to the top of Mt. Helix, overlooking San Diego, and as the sun was setting formally proposed.
Valerie hesitated. She loved him and wanted to marry him, but this all seemed too fast. She was still only seventeen, was a straight “A” student in school, and wanted to go to college.
“You can’t possibly say no to me,” nineteen-year-old Bill argued. “If I get in the Air Force I’ll get a two-month leave. It’ll be the perfect opportunity for a honeymoon.”
Upon returning to Annapolis, Bill’s gentle but persistent campaign continued. New letters arrived daily, many including jewelry brochures showing Valerie a selection of engagement rings, all miniature variations of his class ring. She wrote back, describing how one ring, with a single small diamond surrounded by a cluster of even smaller diamonds, was the one she liked best. But she did not tell him to buy it.
At the same time she began taking instruction in Catholicism. Valerie had been raised as a casual Protestant. Her parents had left the choice of her church entirely up to her, and on Sunday her church of preference was usually determined by the church her friends attended.
Bill, however, had been raised a Catholic, and he took its sacraments seriously. If he was going to marry Valerie she had to convert. Though she hadn’t yet committed to marriage, Valerie decided she had better find out about his religion, just in case. Twice a week she attended classes at two different churches, learning the theology of Catholicism.
Though she still wasn’t sure she was ready for marriage, by June Valerie had decided to convert. She also knew that Bill had bought her a ring (though he wouldn’t show it to her). And she had agreed to attend June week. She had never been to the East Coast, and the glamour of the Ring Dance seemed too good to miss. She saved her money and flew across the country with all her formal clothing.
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