Falling to Earth (46 page)

Ironies were piling on ironies, I thought. I’d been honored by Congress, then questioned by them for wrongdoing. I’d been honored by a vice president who was then forced out for wrongdoing, and now I was being asked to help replace him. At least, I thought, this was a sign that the stain on my character following the covers incident must be lifting. People were thinking of me again in relation to the Apollo 15 adventure, not that damn little package of envelopes.

In the end, I turned the offer down. I would have had to give up my military pension, and I was only a couple of years away from the required two decades in the service. Plus, I wasn’t convinced I could win. The seat was traditionally a very safe Republican stronghold. No Democrat had won there since 1912. But times were changing: Nixon was plagued with his own scandals. Sure enough, in the spring of 1974 a Democrat won Ford’s seat in a huge upset, running on an anti-Nixon platform. It was a foreshadowing of further trouble that year for Nixon and the Republicans, which culminated in Nixon’s resignation that summer. Less than a year after my conversation with him, Gerald Ford was president.

I felt sorry for Richard Nixon. He’d been wonderful to me and my family. At the same time, I recognized he had brought his troubles on himself through behind-the-scenes deals and had been caught. But in reality I didn’t have too much time for national politics. I was more interested in what was happening to Dave Scott.

It seemed that Dave had shrugged off the covers scandal; he was promoted to important positions within the heart of NASA. By 1973 he was heading a technical delegation to the Soviet Union, working on ways for Apollo to dock with a Soviet spacecraft. This was not only a great technical assignment, but also important international diplomacy. Dave was soon promoted again to deputy director of NASA’s Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. This was a coveted assignment, since cutting-edge experimental flying took place there.

I tried not to feel sorry for myself. I’d landed on my feet, after all, and was doing interesting work. But it was hard for me not to make comparisons. Jim and I had stuck by our commander as loyal crewmembers. We’d been told to get the hell out of town. Dave got to stay—not only stay, but he was
promoted
. It was tough not to feel like I’d been screwed over.

I had been very naïve. I had believed all of those pep talks about acting as a crew. It was so deeply ingrained in me to follow my commander—in the military and in NASA—that it took me years to realize it had all just been bullshit. What had that loyalty got me? Nothing.

But it could be worse, I thought. I could have been Jim.

Jim’s ministry had been a phenomenal success. He asked me to join the board of his foundation, and I agreed. He was in demand worldwide to talk about the moon and his religious experiences. His schedule wasn’t unlike the world tour we’d taken after Apollo 15. I heard Jim’s speeches, but I didn’t always agree with his viewpoint. For years he tried to make an analogy between the twelve people who walked on the moon, and Jesus’s twelve disciples. He repeatedly tried to gather the twelve astronauts for a religious retreat, believing they were somehow specially chosen. Of course, the other twelve of us who had flown to the moon without landing found that a little strange. Jim never did gather his twelve moon walkers in one place.

Perhaps it was the stress of the nonstop travel, or possibly the aftereffects of the physical demands of our flight. Whatever the reason, Jim had a heart attack in the spring of 1973.

Jim called me from his hospital bed. He’d scheduled a large number of speaking events and didn’t want to let those people down. Could I fill in for him?

I couldn’t give a religious-themed speech the way Jim did. I was also busy with my own work at Ames. It would have been easy to turn him down and not feel guilty. But Jim was my crewmember and my buddy; I wouldn’t let him down. I stepped in, and while he recuperated I gave speeches in his place. I talked about our flight and general themes of humanity getting along as a species, as a planet, despite religious and political differences. It seemed to go down well, and Jim was forever grateful that I was there when he needed me most. His ministry survived.

I also gave some time to a writer who frequently stopped by. His name was Tom Wolfe, and he’d visit San Francisco for two or three days at a time and head down to Ames to see me. He’d already grabbed me once for a coffee and a chat when I’d been at the Cape for a launch, but now Tom wanted to talk in more depth. We’d sit around my house, play cards, and chat. Dee often joined us. The guy was a sponge for information about the space program and was writing a magazine article called “Post-Orbital Remorse,” examining how some astronauts had a tough time deciding what to do with themselves after the incredible experience of spaceflight. I could relate, although for very different reasons. I poured my soul out to him. Tom talked to many astronauts and eventually expanded and changed that article into a full-length book called
The Right Stuff
. It was an outstanding read.

I had my own, personal post-astronaut remorse to deal with. By 1975, I’d been in the air force for twenty years. They had been good to me. For almost half of that time, I’d been on loan to NASA. The air force had also been ready to take me back after the covers scandal. But I had essentially lived as a civilian for a decade while at NASA. I knew I’d never be promoted after what George Low told me he’d placed in my file. It was time to retire.

Hans Mark had been wonderful as well, taking a gamble on me when no one else wanted to. But his bosses at NASA were not so charitable. I always sensed that I had been allowed to ride out my twenty years in the air force, but once that time was up, NASA management would be happy for me to leave.

Hans offered me the opportunity to stay at Ames once I left the air force. I could have continued to run the airborne science division as a civilian. It was not as glamorous as being an astronaut, but it was still the most senior job I’d ever had in my life. But I was so tired of NASA. Tired of the bureaucracy. I felt like I’d been beaten over the head with it for long enough. I needed to get out of the whole business and wash the sour taste out of my mouth.

My colleagues in the airborne science division threw a low-key retirement party for me. I’d already sold my home and stashed all of my possessions in a motor home parked at the back of the building. As soon as the party was over, I strolled out and drove east, back to Michigan.

Dave retired from the air force the same year. He never did get promoted to general, which must have been a crushing disappointment for an officer who many assumed would head the air force some day. But he did continue to be promoted by NASA. He stayed with the agency as a civilian and was promoted to director of the Flight Research Center.

I left NASA behind and started a new chapter in my life. For a while I worked on business partnership plans with Ed Cole, the former president of General Motors, renewing my lifelong interest in cars. Then, striking out on my own, I started an energy management company. I helped to develop a stall warning system for aircraft and sold it to a large manufacturer. I worked on aircraft technology development, creating microprocessors for airplanes. I also owned and ran a small helicopter sightseeing company. There is never much money in working for yourself—but I had
a lot
more fun.

I love recalling these adventures. They cover almost half of my life and are very interesting—to
me
. However, I doubt others will want to hear them. That’s the odd thing about being a former astronaut: many of us spent less than a decade with NASA, even less time training for a flight, and mere days in space, and yet that time is all people remember us for. It’s an understandable public reaction, but to live it is peculiar. To the public mind, we are frozen in time, decades ago, and nothing we do afterward really matters. We all dealt with that in different ways.

Some guys in the Apollo program believed that flying to the moon would change their lives forever. Did it? Hard to say, because theirs was a self-fulfilling prophecy. They had decided it would change their lives, so it did. It came to define them, as if it were the only worthwhile thing they had ever done.

Others seemed almost too blasé about it. When strangers asked Pete Conrad how it felt to journey to the moon, he’d shrug it off as just another flight—no big deal. I don’t think Pete actually felt that way. But it was what a test pilot was supposed to say—that’s what we do, we fly into the unknown and don’t worry about what it means.
Of course
we did something special, Pete was saying through his casual stance, we were
already
special, an elite, handpicked team of top aviators.

I had what I felt was a normal reaction, somewhere between the two extremes. I was just a guy who had done a job. I felt proud that I had completed it and happy to have been in the right place at the right time. I didn’t plan to spend the rest of my life living off the fading glory of my moment as an Apollo astronaut. But neither would I disappear into the background and pretend I hadn’t been a small part of one of the century’s finest achievements. I was proud of what I had done. Apart from how it had all ended.

The White House would invite Apollo astronauts to special events on occasion, but other than that I didn’t have too much involvement with the space program, past or present. I was pleased to be invited, but I still felt out of place. For the general public, the covers issue became a footnote while the great success of the Apollo 15 mission grew to eclipse it once again. I was happy for that. I felt that was how it should be. But public perception and private whispering are two very different things. A group of retired astronauts is like a bunch of high school kids brought together for gossipy reunions. We only all worked together for a short period in our lives, but the whispering about each other went on forever. And I felt I was still considered tainted. My peers no longer shunned me, as they had when I left Houston. But behind the smiles and the handshakes I sensed a continuing unease. I was the guy who had been fired. Perhaps I always would be to them.

I was successful in my post-NASA career. I was having fun. But I knew that my life should not have had this dark moment. And no amount of success, before or after it, could remove that nagging feeling.

While to the outside world we remained frozen in time, most Apollo astronauts went on to other things, many of them far removed from the space program. Dave finally left NASA in 1977, coincidentally, the same year the first
Star Wars
movie was released, featuring another
Falcon
spacecraft that flew just a
little
faster than ours. It was also a decisive year for Jim Irwin, but not for a good reason. Jim had his second heart attack while skiing in Colorado, not long after he’d had heart surgery. It took him off the speaking circuit, but once again, not for long. He soon jumped back into his busy evangelical schedule. I thought he was crazy.

That same year, I had my own tragedy to deal with. My father died in a horrific accident.

I had moved down to Palm Beach, Florida, by this time, and my parents followed me. They had sold the farm long ago and saved hard to move to a warmer state. They bought a home only ten minutes from mine. My father, now in his seventies, found another job as a movie projectionist. One afternoon he was driving some visiting relatives back to the Miami airport when he slammed into the concrete wall surrounding a toll booth. I received a phone call telling me that my mother and three relatives were in a Miami hospital, badly injured. And my father was dead.

At the funeral service for him up in Michigan, as my mother stoically received his ashes, I pondered the bitter irony. I’d lived a dangerous life, flying high-performance jets and a space mission. My easygoing father had always played it safe. And yet here we were at his funeral. I was glad I’d lived an adventurous life, because it didn’t seem to make any difference in the end. If it was your time, it was your time.

My mother moved back to Jackson and the grim Michigan winters. She wanted it that way. The whole family pitched in and fixed up a beautiful home for her. And I thought about what to do next with my life.

I’d hardened a little over the years. I like to think I had grown wiser. I had always been self-sufficient, but I realized with increasing clarity that I had also been a very naïve and trusting person, too easily led by people I looked up to. It was time to do something about that. I’d try and lead instead of follow.

I had been giving talks in the Palm Beach area, and sometimes these conversations touched on the problems our country faced. People seemed to like my opinions, and many said I should run for political office. Not a bad idea, I decided. I would put my money where my mouth was, and even if I didn’t win, people would at least understand I was serious. When a Florida congressional seat became wide open in 1982 because of a retirement, it seemed like the perfect moment.

Only 20 percent of the work of running for Congress is explaining your ideas to the public, I discovered. The vast majority is raising money. I enjoyed traveling the area and talking to people. But I had a hard time asking them to give me donations; it wasn’t in my nature. But I raised enough. I grew increasingly confident as I neared the primary vote.

I lost by a slim margin. But I was glad I had been through the process. It raised my confidence level, toughened me up some more, and gave me a new perspective.

The political process also brought me a surprising twist of good luck in my personal life. I had been adrift since a brief, unsuccessful marriage in the 1970s. Then a month after I began my congressional campaign, I met a widow named Jill Hotchkiss at a party. We hit it off instantly. Neither of us was looking for a relationship, but when you meet someone so funny, outgoing, and beautiful, it doesn’t matter. In July of 1982, in the middle of the campaign, we married. My campaign manager wasn’t happy; it would have been better for press coverage if I were a bachelor candidate. But Jill was more important than any campaign. We’ve been together ever since. I didn’t win a seat in Congress–but I did win Jill. I looked to the future with confidence.