Fighting for Space

by Amy Shira Teitel

  Over three afternoons, Jerrie submitted herself to a battery of tests, including the Wechsler adult intelligent scale IQ test, Rorschach tests, draw-a-person tests, and sentence completion tests. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was a set of 561 personal questions designed to uncover character or psychological problems. Electroencephalogram and neurological examinations went hand in hand with informal interviews to uncover her childhood, her adolescence, and her occupational attitudes. All in all, it totaled some thirty hours of talk, a challenge for naturally shy Jerrie. On Friday, Jay told her she had demonstrated enough mental and emotional fortitude to try his isolation tank.

  Jerrie woke up at six-thirty on Saturday morning. Warm September sunlight streamed into the den at her parents’ house where she knelt in prayer, asking for strength. This test, she was sure, would make or break her dreams of qualifying for spaceflight. “Profound sensory deprivation,” Dr. Shurley called it, describing the sensation as akin to being struck blind and deaf without a sense of taste, smell, or touch. Jerrie had heard that such complete sensory isolation could cause hallucinations and nonsensical babbling as it revealed the subject’s hidden anxieties and patterns of psychological defense. Having spent a good deal of her childhood in solitary pursuits, Jerrie felt fairly confident about this test, but she also knew that exploring the Oklahoma countryside alone was a far cry from complete sensory isolation. She ate a quick breakfast of milk and a mayonnaise sandwich, then set out for the hospital.

  When she arrived, Jay and his assistant, Cathy Walters, made sure she was ready. She assured them that she’d slept enough and had eaten breakfast, though she didn’t admit to having any feelings of nervousness. Keeping a brave face, she confirmed she was ready to get started.

  They led her into an underground room where the air was heated to match her body temperature. Dressed in a bathing suit, Jerrie entered the eight-and-a-half-foot-deep, ten-foot-diameter water tank. She wore a rubber collar to keep her head safely above water and a piece of foam rubber under the small of her back to help her float. Sensitive microphones hung over the tank to pick up her every word and record it on tape. She was given an identification number for the test—52—and was told she could speak as much as she wanted to Cathy in the adjacent observation room so long as she used her number to protect her anonymity on the record. It would, however, be a one-way conversation. There were no cameras in the test room; once she was alone, she could remove her bathing suit, taking away the final sensation of fabric on skin. The water in the tank, heated to match her body temperature, circulated so she could urinate knowing it would be filtered out. When she wanted to end the test, she just had to tell Cathy, and the lights would come up slowly. With that, Jay and Cathy left Jerrie alone in the room.

  The eight-inch-thick door closed, and the insulated room became silent as a tomb. Then the lights went down. Jerrie quickly realized that this was a different kind of solitude. Flying for hours alone at night was dark, but she had instruments to watch, weather to think about, radio signals to hear, and stars to see. There was none of that now. There wasn’t so much as a sliver of light coming in from under the door, the room was so well insulated. If she lay perfectly still, she couldn’t feel any physical sensation on her skin whatsoever.

  Jerrie floated. She tried to relax but, knowing it was still a test, she gave continuous status updates. “I’m very comfortable lying on my back, my feet sort of dangling, my arms behind me.” She made sure to speak normally since the microphones were so sensitive. She wondered if this complete blackness was what it was like to be blind. She yawned, and in the absolute silence, noticed her teeth clicked when she did. She was curious whether her teeth always clicked when she yawned, and whether the sound had been picked up on the microphone. She thought of the pile of fan mail on her desk and wondered if three secretaries would be enough to help her manage all the replies. Every so often, she caught herself speculating whether she was awake or dreaming, but the peacefulness of the tank eventually relaxed her into a state of forgetfulness.

  “Reporting in again that everything’s fine. I’ll try to tell you how I feel. That’s something you said you wanted to know,” she said out loud. “Still no feeling in the water whatsoever, because there’s no motion. The minute I move, of course, I can feel the water. But I dislike moving. I’d rather be real still.”

  Jerrie pushed herself around the tank. She felt the wall. She saw what she thought looked like a faint spot of light on the wall. She stretched to relieve a crick in her back. She imagined she was helping her older sister Carolyn take her kids to the doctor’s and then out shopping—and that they’d left their black dachshund Schatzi in the car, but then the dog appeared in the doctor’s office where no one seemed to mind watching him. Realizing she’d fallen asleep, Jerrie decided not to report the dream. It was a ridiculous one, anyway, and certainly not something she thought needed to be on the record.

  After what felt like a few hours, Jerrie spoke directly to Cathy. “This is subject 52 reporting that everything’s fine in here. I think I’ll get out of the tank unless you want me to stay in longer. I don’t have any strong feeling either way.”

  “Can you hear me?” The sudden booming voice made Jerrie jump.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Why do you want to come out at this particular time?” Cathy’s voice asked.

  “I don’t have any particular reasons for coming out or staying in,” Jerrie replied, still floating in the dark. “I don’t think my feelings are going to change by staying in here any longer, and I don’t see any need in doing so.”

  The lights in the room came up slowly. Jerrie made her way to the side of the tank. She climbed down the ladder, toweled off, dressed, and opened the heavy door to see Jay and Cathy there to greet her, both smiling.

  “What time do you think it is?” Dr. Shurley asked.

  Jerrie couldn’t say. Two o’clock maybe? He invited her to remove the cover on the wall clock. It was seven o’clock. She’d been in the tank for nine hours and forty minutes, shattering previous records.

  Jay Shurley was pleased with Jerrie’s results. Like Randy Lovelace, he felt she possessed some mental qualities that could be an asset in spaceflight, namely how calm she had been in the face of extreme boredom and isolation. But something about her calmness felt off, almost as though she was hiding how she really felt. He was struck by her comments about immobility and the way she’d described her physical sensations in the tank. To Jay, she seemed strangely self-constrained, like she was forcing herself to be the stoic pilot she assumed would be best suited to spaceflight, almost as if she was unable or perhaps unwilling to allow herself the freedom to let her mind wander.

  Considering how seriously Jerrie seemed to be about proving her merits as a pilot, Jay was somewhat taken aback when she returned days later with her friend and writer for LIFE magazine Jane Rieker in tow. Jerrie returned to the tank—this time in a bathing suit—while Jane sat in the dark taking infrared photographs and notes. Apparently, Jay thought, getting into space for Jerrie was less about her abilities and more about making sure the world knew how capable she really was.

  * * *

  Toward the end of October 1960, Mary Wallace Funk, who preferred to be called Wally, picked up the latest issue of LIFE magazine. Flipping through its pages, she stopped at a photo spread under the headline “Damp Prelude to Space.” It was the infrared pictures of Jerrie in the isolation tank accompanied by an article identifying her as an accomplished pilot and the first woman to undergo tests for space travel. Wally barely knew anything about what an astronaut did, but she knew how to fly and, like so many pilots, was drawn to the idea of exploring a new frontier. Space seemed like as good a frontier as any, and she thought she might like to be the second woman to undergo tests for space travel. So she wrote to the Dr. Shurley mentioned in the article asking about the requirements, because she was “most interested in these tests to become an astronaut.” She included her credentials—a un
iversity degree from Oklahoma State, a handful of collegiate flight team awards, a flight instructor rating, a single-engine airplane rating, and 3,000 hours in the air. For good measure, she sent a similar letter to Jerrie. She didn’t want to overlook any possible route into this apparent astronaut testing program.

  Jay Shurley was impressed when he read Wally’s letter. Not only did this woman have an excellent flying background, but she was also just twenty-one years old, which suggested incredible initiative and drive. He replied right away explaining that he had no formal role in any female astronaut program but suggested she write to both Jerrie and Randy Lovelace. “May I congratulate you on your attainments thus far,” he ended his letter, “and encourage you generally in your astronautic aspirations. I firmly believe that women, as well as men, have a vital and personal role to play in the coming exploration of space.”

  Wally wasted no time in writing to Randy, who was similarly impressed by her qualifications and drive. Her apparent career focus made her the exception to his minimum age requirement. He wrote back inclosing a card listing further information he needed, the same details he wanted from every interested female pilot. She was asked to provide basic background and personal things like her birthplace, height, and weight, as well as her Federal Aviation Administration medical certification, any further degrees, research interests, publications, membership in organizations and societies, military experience, and aviation instruction experience. To get a sense of her personality, Randy asked for a list of hobbies, sports, personal references, and a small recent photograph. A section at the bottom asked for particulars about her aviation experience as well as less immediately pertinent information about her lineage, church affiliation, marital status, number of children, and foreign languages spoken.

  Less than a month after she’d first seen the article about Jerrie’s sensory deprivation tests, Wally sent all her information to Randy. Soon after, she got a reply from Jerrie herself. “I was glad to hear that you are interested in the research program for women in space and you did the right thing by writing to Dr. Randolph Lovelace II in Albuquerque,” Jerrie wrote, availing herself should Wally need anything else in her quest to join the research program. Now Wally, like Jerri Sloan and Jan and Marion Dietrich, had nothing to do but wait for the next letter to come.

  * * *

  LBJ had nothing to do but wait on the night of November 8, 1960. He and Lady Bird were holed up in the Driskill Hotel in Austin to watch the results of the presidential election on TV. Jack Kennedy and his team were elsewhere.

  The campaign had been excruciating for Lyndon. Animosity from the Kennedy camp hadn’t abated, mainly from Jack’s brother Bobby, who just didn’t like the vice presidential candidate; he still held a grudge against the Texan for a trip to the ranch during which Jack had been forced to go hunting and wear a ten-gallon hat. Internal friction was one thing, but the press had picked up on the tension. Rumors of a rift on the Democratic ticket were strengthened when people noticed Jack and Lyndon rarely appeared at events together. It turned out that the Kennedy team thought the contrast in ages between JFK and LBJ made the presidential hopeful look like a kid who was wholly unfit to run the country. Not until Lyndon pitched a fit demanding they present a unified front had the two appeared on stage together.

  LBJ and JFK touched base over the phone as the election results trickled in. “I see you are losing Ohio,” Lyndon needled his running mate. “I am carrying Texas and we are doing pretty well in Pennsylvania.” It wasn’t until seven o’clock the following morning that news anchors called the election for Kennedy-Johnson. They’d won by a razor-thin margin. LBJ similarly won the Texas Senate race by a hair, but enough to keep his seat.

  For all the work he’d done campaigning, for all the stress of the previous months, the victory left Lyndon with a sense of foreboding. A lifetime in politics had led to this. He would have to give up his position as Senate majority leader, surrendering one of the most powerful positions in Washington for perhaps the least powerful office in the world. For the first time in his life, he felt no joy for winning an election, no jubilation. To his gathered staff, the vice president-elect looked worse than miserable. He looked as though he was in mourning.

  * * *

  Around the time her friend Lyndon was elected vice president, Jackie got a letter from Randy about his interest in putting women through the astronaut medical tests. As she was the former director of the Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots during the war, a staple in the flying world, and a trusted friend, he wanted her help and advice in setting up this research program. She assumed that he would eventually want her to take the tests, too. He had, after all, been using her flights to gather data for decades, and she was the only woman in the country to have worked as a test pilot, giving her a sense of the skill and experience the Mercury astronauts had under their belts. Not a moment too soon, she thought. She knew how important a test program like this could be for the future of women flying in space, even if it was years down the line, and she already had some concerns. From what he had told her, Jackie knew letters were on their way to potential female test subjects, but the selection looked haphazard. Of the twenty women he had contacted, seven didn’t meet his own basic requirements. That left thirteen candidates, and Jackie believed some of those would not pass the physical tests, and still others would drop out for one reason or another. The result, she worried, would be a group too small for him to reach any conclusions about how women could perform as astronauts compared to men, which would limit potential next steps. Her own digging into the FAA databases in Washington and Oklahoma City revealed some 9,870 female pilots in the United States. There had to be more than twenty who qualified as candidates for these medical tests.

  Assuming the role of Randy’s special consultant, Jackie arranged her thoughts in a letter. Suspecting a future government program would benefit from his own preliminary test data, she urged him to liberalize the entrance requirements and relax the age requirements as well. She pointed out that he might be hard-pressed to find young women with more than 1,000 hours in the air. Older women would not only have the required hours, but they would also have more experience. Besides, testing older women could generate valuable data on women’s long-term potential in an astronaut program. As part of this older dataset, Jackie offered to take the tests herself in January; she could fly out to Albuquerque before a speaking engagement in Dallas. The foundation had most of her medical information on file, so she would only need to take the specialized tests like the bicycle stress test.

  Jackie urged Randy to open the testing to married women, too, and make it clear that marital status had nothing to do with fitness for testing. As she’d done with the WASPs, she didn’t want any girl’s decision not to marry to open her to criticism, and she felt married women showed emotional stability. Finally, though Jackie recognized it would be difficult for the women to make it to Albuquerque for the tests—they weren’t funded as a group, so each woman would have to arrive when her schedule lined up with a free moment at the clinic—she advised that there be a final phase with everyone tested together. What this program needed, she wrote, was for all the women to have equal standing, to avoid any jealousies or criticisms. No one should have any preferential treatment, real or perceived, in something as serious as a potential woman-in-space program. The women should know this, and so should the press. Jackie also urged Randy to approach the women with a sense of reality about their testing. “At this stage at least,” she wrote, “you should bear in mind, that it is very likely to be a long time before any one or more of the candidates is put into space flight.”

  Through more letters and in-person meetings, Jackie and Randy continued to discuss their plans for a more in-depth women’s testing program as 1960 drew to a close. But Jackie was starting to have some concerns over Jerrie’s press coverage, much of which she was hearing about secondhand when friends sent her the magazine clippings. “What is the ‘isolation chamber’ that Jerry Cobb t
alks about?” she asked Randy just before the new year. She didn’t know whether the LIFE article meant Jerrie had been advanced to a second phase of testing at Wright Field or whether it was part of some routine medical tests in New Mexico. In any case, she felt it was unacceptable that she, Randy’s consultant and old friend, should be finding out about these program developments at the same time as the rest of the world. To avoid any further surprises, Jackie decided she and Jerrie should meet and get the conversation about leadership out of the way. She invited Jerrie to the Ranch, her preferred meeting spot as it gave her the home-court advantage, but Jerrie turned down one invitation after another with flimsy excuses ranging from urgent travel plans to unforeseen work commitments.

  * * *

  In the beginning of January 1961, Jackie landed her Lodestar at the Dallas airport to find a small welcome party gathered on the runway. They were women from the local Zonta Club and the Women’s Group of the Dallas Council on World Affairs, the two groups she was in town to address. Jerri Sloan was there, too, representing the local chapter of the Ninety-Nines, as was Jerrie Cobb, in town for the same events as Jackie.

  Bringing her plane to a stop, Jackie leaned out the window and waved to the smiling crowd. Photographers scrambled for pictures while journalists took furious notes for articles that would appear in the next day’s paper. Seeking a better angle for a shot, one photographer asked if Jackie could wave from the other side of the plane. She obliged but made sure everyone knew the implications of the seemingly simple request. “You’re photographing me from the copilot’s seat. I’m the pilot,” she yelled down to him. There were more pictures taken as Jackie mingled with the crowd on the runway. One photographer managed to get local Zonta Club president, Noreen Nicol, on Jackie’s right and Jerrie Cobb on her left. Their bodies were angled toward each other, but the two women kept a considerable distance from each other as they strained smiles for the photographer.