Part 16 (1/2)
All of a sudden, glancing up, she saw a woman sporting a perfectly coiffed hairdo.
”No reporters!” screamed Betty, only the lady wasn't a newswoman. She was New Nine astronaut wife Pat McDivitt, who'd just gone to the beauty parlor.
Betty's neighbor, Wally, was put in charge of making the arrangements for the funeral. ”What do you want?” he asked her.
”The whole nine yards,” Betty told him. ”The whole thing, whatever they do, do it.”
NASA called Betty to inform her that a NASA Gulfstream would fly out of D.C. to pick her up and fly her to Gus's funeral in Arlington. But NASA wasn't going to start pulling anything over on Betty Grissom. Being the most senior of the widows, she insisted she get to fly out on the Gulfstream already parked in Houston. ”How about the Houston airplane?” she kept asking until NASA finally rejiggered the plans.
Having heard the terrible news on the airwaves-the capsule on fire, and everybody burning up-Betty's hairdresser figured her client could use a touch-up. Betty had a standing Friday appointment for a shampoo and set, and had gone just that morning. She had come a long way from the plainspoken Hoosier who once upon a time had refused to have her makeup done for the Mercury wives' first Life cover shoot.
”I can't let you go to Was.h.i.+ngton looking like that,” the hairdresser said.
All the wives sitting with Betty followed her down the hall to her bedroom. Betty closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax in the girl's expert hands. The kind stylist also worked her magic on the other wives. Betty still pretty much followed Gus's orders of ”Don't mess with your hair.”
Over at the Whites' home in El Lago, Susan Borman sat with Pat White for hours as Pat cried her eyes out. The following night, after seeing the capsule burned like a ”fire-blackened charnel house,” Frank and Deke held their own version of the Irish wake, smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and watching a NASA man perform handstands. Frank felt very strongly about Ed White. He thought Ed was marvelous.
Back in his Edwards days when a guy bought the farm, famously tough Frank took a moment to be glad it wasn't him. He never got all ”clanked up,” but remained stoic and quiet. After the fire, his face was stripped of its fighter pilot unflappability. In the days and weeks to come, Pat White asked Susan her terrifying questions.
”Who am I, Susan? Who am I? I've lost everything. It's all gone.”
After the fire, Martha Chaffee woke up in the middle of the night and realized she'd unconsciously switched to Roger's side of the bed to be closer to him. Her two kids, Stephen and Sheryl Lyn, were sleeping right beside her. The doorbell was ringing. It was astronaut Gene Cernan from next door. He'd been out at the Apollo contractor North American in Downey, California, and had flown home to be with her and his wife. Martha cried all over him, because he was a man, and they'd been such good friends ever since Purdue.
The cars lined up to make the trip out to Arlington National Cemetery. ”I'm in the first limousine this time,” Betty said to the other Mercury wives. ”Catch up to me.”
The flag-draped wooden coffin was in a caisson drawn by six black horses; three were riderless with their saddles empty. The trees at Arlington were gray and barren; it was the dead of winter. Rifle shots sounded, then a bugler played ”Taps” as three jets roared overhead in a ”missing man flyby,” with one peeling off in memory of the fallen astronaut. It was very moving.
Betty wore navy blue, seeing as how much Gus hated black. She squinted at the wives, watching suspiciously to make sure they acted appropriately.
Gus's six Mercury colleagues were the pallbearers. When Betty saw the old gang together again, she thought, ”Gus was a lick above them all.” She figured they all knew it, too. Why else had they dismissed him as a nave Hoosier from the beginning?
Gus had been picked to fly the first missions of both the Gemini and the Apollo programs, and Betty knew if he had lived, he would've been the first man to walk on the Moon. Where were the others now? Scott Carpenter was now working as an ”executive a.s.sistant to the director” at the Manned s.p.a.cecraft Center and as an aquanaut. Chief Astronaut Al and Coordinator of Astronaut Activities Deke, while in charge of the Astronaut Office, were both grounded from flight. John still peac.o.c.ked around like he owned the place, but he was retired from NASA and working as an executive for RC Cola. Gordo was still with the agency but too c.o.c.ky about his skills, not giving his all to learn the new technology. Wally was still flying, but today he was just plain irritating Betty, standing too close to her side by the grave. She was pretty sure that Wally had been a.s.signed to babysit her, but Betty didn't think she needed any d.a.m.n wife-sitter! She could handle herself perfectly well on her own, thank you very much.
As her Gus was lowered into the ground, LBJ bent down to whisper into the widow's ear.
”What did he say?” Wally wanted to know.
Betty hadn't heard what condolences the gloomy vulture LBJ had offered, and she didn't care to ask him to repeat them. She didn't want to play the mourning wife. Gus had always said that if he died, she needed to have a party. She had promised him she would, and besides, Betty would never be able to say good-bye. But all things considered, she thought the funeral was pretty nice.
Next was Ed White's; NASA had been terrible about where he was to be buried. He'd wanted to be laid to rest at his alma mater, West Point. But NASA had insisted he be buried at Arlington beside Gus and Roger.
Pat White was beside herself, but she didn't have the guts to stand up to NASA. Her friend Susan Borman did. Frank phoned the Pentagon and convinced them. Ed would be buried at West Point. That's what Ed's father, a major general in the Air Force, wanted. That's what his widow wanted.
The pilots roared over and the missing-man plane peeled off as ”Taps” came to an end. Afterward, Lady Bird comforted Pat behind her black veil, and little Bonnie and Eddie. Pat was the only Apollo 1 fire widow who went to all three services: Gus's first, Roger's next, then two hours later she was on a plane bound for West Point. She functioned. She thought she was doing all right. Later she would remember little of those days.
”Well, I'll get a color TV for the children,” Pat told the press, wanting one of the new marvels, ”and we'll take a trip.”
One of the astronauts had taken over Pat's business affairs, and told her, ”Now Pat, you aren't going to be able to do these things for several months.”