Wally Funk's Race for Space

by Sue Nelson

  Immediately after the final selection is made of those of you that pass the tests at Pensacola it is suggested that you have a meeting as a group to decide on a group policy for any publicity. As you know, the male astronauts have acted as a group on all matters concerning publicity every [sic] their initial selection and I would like to strongly urge that the results of their group acting in this field be considered very seriously.’

  Jackie Cochran sent a letter to all the successful women on the same day. Apart from reiterating her role as a financial donor, it also clarified the reasons for her support:

  As you probably know I am not a participant in these medical checks and tests. They were set up for women under forty years of age. Some of you may therefore wonder why my great interest and my assistance.

  There is no astronaut program for women as yet. The medical checks at Albuquerque and the further tests to be made at Pensacola are purely experimental and in the nature of research, fostered by some of the doctors and their associates interested in aerospace medicine. No program for women has been officially adopted as yet by any of the governmental agencies. As a result you were under no commitment to carry forward as a result of successfully passing your tests at Albuquerque and you will be under no commitment as to the future if you pass the tests at Pensacola.

  But I think a properly organized astronaut program for women would be a fine thing. I would like to help see it come about.

  Jerrie Cobb also wrote to Wally and the other members of the Mercury 13 in July 1961. Before their expected September arrival in Florida for phase two, she offered the women the chance of optional additional testing in Oklahoma City for psychological and evaluated stress response. Two women arranged to do just that. No prizes for guessing the name of one of those women.

  Dear Wally,

  Sorry I missed your call, but Bonnie said that you prefer the dates August 3 through 5th, to undergo the psychological and sensory deprivation (isolation) tests here in Oklahoma City. Arrangements have been made with Dr. Jay T. Shurley, chief psychiatric services division, Veterans Administration Hospital, for you to begin your testing Thursday morning August 3rd at 8.00 am and you will be completed sometime Saturday afternoon.

  Rhea Hurrle of Houston, Texas, is coming this Sunday and will start the tests on Monday morning, finishing up Wednesday afternoon. I do not know exactly when she plans to leave, but if you arrive Wednesday afternoon or evening, perhaps you two will have a chance to get acquainted.

  I would be delighted to have you as a guest in my home, during the days you are here, and if you will let me know approximately when you will be arriving, I will meet you. Or if you are driving I’ll give you instructions on how to find my house. It was good seeing you in California and I’ll look forward to seeing you again Wednesday 2 August. If there is anything at all I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to call me collect.

  With best wishes, I remain

  Cordially,

  Jerrie Cobb

  The isolation test differed significantly from the Mercury 7 test. For the men, isolation meant being in a dark soundproofed room for up to three hours. John Glenn, for instance, was sat at a desk and found a pen, writing poetry in the darkness to while away the time. For the women, the test required floating in a circular flotation tank in a dark soundproofed room instead. Test subjects couldn’t see, hear, taste or smell anything. By keeping the water at body temperature, people would also find it difficult to experience the sensation of being touched. Most people hallucinated during this test. Not Wally. She spent ten hours and thirty-five minutes in the tank in complete silence before the test was forcibly stopped. Dr Shurley informed her that she had broken the record. She prepared for the next stage of astronaut tests by doing everything she had to and more, and by taking charge of her destiny. Unfortunately, what happened next was beyond her control.

  Despite Lovelace having NASA credentials, the privately funded programme had no official NASA involvement. He had entered an informal arrangement with the Naval School of Aviation Medicine for the Pensacola tests. Jackie Cochran then did something inexplicable. This aviation trailblazer for women aired concerns about the Woman in Space Program to Admiral Robert Pirie, since his military facility was hosting the women. It resulted in the Naval School clarifying the situation with NASA. The space agency confirmed that the women’s phase two testing was not an official request, and the tests were cancelled.

  Wally received a Western Union telegram from Jerrie Cobb. It was in block capitals, dated 11 September 1961, and had been sent by a colleague of hers, Bonnie Doyle, at the company where she worked.

  MISS COBB HAS JUST INFORMED ME FROM WASHINGTON THAT SHE HAS BEEN UNABLE TO REVERSE DECISION POSTPONING FLORIDA TESTING AGAIN. LOVELACE WILL CONTACT YOU SHORTLY BUT JERRIE WANTED YOU TO KNOW IMMEDIATELY SO YOU WOULD NOT PLAN TRIP THIS WEEKEND. VERY SORRY FOR SUCH SHORT NOTICE BUT IT IS UNAVOIDABLE.

  A day later Wally received another Western Union telegram at Fort Sill Oklahoma, again in block capitals, but this time from Lovelace and without punctuation. It was dated 12 September 1961, just six days before the women were due to start phase two testing after passing the toughest physical tests on Earth:

  REGRET TO ADVISE ARRANGEMENTS AT PENSACOLA CANCELLED PROBABLY WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE TO CARRY OUT THIS PART OF PROGRAM YOU MAY RETURN EXPENSES ADVANCE ALLOTMENT TO LOVELACE FOUNDATION C/O ME LETTER WILL ADVISE OF ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENTS WHEN MATTER CLEARED FURTHER.

  W. RANDOLPH LOVELACE II, M.D.

  Considering what Wally and all the other women had been through, it was a cruel and shocking blow. Some of the women had lost jobs in order to take the next phase of tests. Others, like Truhill, paid a more personal price. Becoming an astronaut, at least in the United States, was to remain a man’s job for the next seventeen years.

  The Mercury 13’s chances ended officially in July 1962. Two of the women – Jerrie Cobb and Janey Hart – had instigated a three-day congressional hearing before the House Science and Astronautics subcommittee with the aim of representing and highlighting the Mercury 13’s achievements and getting women onto NASA’s official astronaut training programme. The names of all the Mercury 13 were made public for the first time: Geraldyne ‘Jerrie’ Cobb, Jane ‘Janey’ Hart (née Briggs), Geraldine ‘Jerri’ Sloan (later Truhill), Sarah Ratley (née Gorelick), Bernice ‘Bea’ Steadman, Irene Leverton, Jean Hixson, twins Janet ‘Jan’ and Marion Dietrich, Rhea Hurrle, Gene Nora Stumbough, Myrtle Cagle and the youngest, Mary Wallace Funk.

  Hart, as reported in the Washington Post, was forthright making their case: ‘I am not arguing that women be admitted to space merely so that they won’t feel discriminated against. I am arguing that they be admitted because they have a very real contribution to make. Let’s face it: for many women the PTA just isn’t enough.’ That last comment was probably heartfelt, since Hart had eight children. She also stated that it was ‘inconceivable that the world of outer space should be restricted to men only, like some sort of stag club’.

  Cobb gave several press interviews at the time of the hearings, but journalists reported her achievements with little respect or seriousness, asking questions about her make-up or marriage. For some of the women the exposure resulted in hate mail, telling them to stay at home with their children.

  ‘Women are eventually going into space,’ Cobb told the House space subcommittee. ‘There is no question about it. Why not begin now?’ Later, she was reported saying, ‘They won’t let me take the actual training course, but I see they have a female chimpanzee named Glenda who is being trained to take it.’

  NASA had three men testifying against the women, including astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter. ‘I think this gets back to the way our social order is organised, really,’ said Glenn. ‘It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order. It may be undesirable.’

  The Mercu
ry 13’s third witness for their case was Jackie Cochran. When she became the first woman to break the sound barrier, the feat was witnessed in the air by her chase pilot Chuck Yeager. Cochran had been too old to take the Mercury 13 tests and surprisingly, despite helping to fund Lovelace’s project from her private wealth, did not take a sisterly approach to the women’s aspirations.

  After Hart and Cobb’s powerful arguments, and considering she was supposed to be on their side, Cochran’s words were damaging. ‘With regards to racing with the Russians,’ Cochran said, ‘sure it’s nice to be first, but it’s nice to be sure. There is no doubt in the world that women will go into space and I think they will be just as good as men …’ The sting was yet to come: ‘I don’t want to see a woman fall flat on her face.’

  Despite the Mercury 13’s success in proving themselves fit for an astronaut squad, Cochran suggested that, when it came to women, more research and testing was needed. For many of the Mercury 13, Cochran’s public testimony was a complete betrayal. The next day, before the hearings were scheduled to be concluded, procedures were brought to a close. Women, it was concluded, couldn’t join NASA since they couldn’t join the military and obtain the required jet experience.

  A year later, on 16 June 1963, history would record the first woman in space. To the United States’ dismay, as with the first man in space, the woman wasn’t an American. Her name was Valentina Tereshkova and, to add insult to injury for the Mercury 13, Russia’s record-breaking cosmonaut wasn’t even a pilot.

  ‘She orbits over the sex barrier,’ Life magazine proclaimed, before describing the achievement of the first woman in space as ‘blue-eyed blonde with a new hairdo stars in a Russian space spectacular’. It was an odd choice of words because, as the accompanying photographs clearly showed, Tereshkova was a brunette. But this was an era, in the early 1960s, when only one in four women in the US worked and the greater expectation was to be a wife, a mother or an adornment. Even so, the magazine also noted: ‘Much better qualified than Valentina were 13 American women. But for a variety of reasons, including NASA’s outstanding lack of enthusiasm, their woman-in-space program has never been able to get off the ground.’

  After Lovelace’s programme was cancelled, Wally took matters into her own hands. She travelled around the United States to take further tests, including those that Jerrie Cobb had completed the year before and that they had been due to take in Florida. She did this by writing letters to military bases or using her connections, including flying students, to find institutions that would allow her to do the same tests as for phases two and three of the astronaut tests. She underwent a centrifuge test at the University of Southern California and, at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, California, in August 1962, Wally took a Martin-Baker seat-ejection test, which involved sitting in a chair and being flung up a pole at high speed.

  There was an audience for her high-altitude chamber test, which gradually reduces the amount of oxygen, helping a pilot recognise the symptoms of hypoxia (low oxygen). Wally began by breathing pure oxygen through a mask. This purges nitrogen from the blood and removes the risk of decompression sickness when atmospheric pressure is reduced in the chamber to simulate the conditions at high altitudes.

  ‘The guys were looking at me through the windows. They took me up to 40,000 feet and I was writing on paper,’ Wally explained. ‘Then they said, “Wally take your mask off” and I did and didn’t think anything of it as I’d flown a Stearman at 12 and 14,000 feet with no oxygen and my stomach could take it. Doing all those acrobatics made me tough. Then at 40,000 feet you take your mask off and I’m supposed to do different tasks, writing, push out the blue button, push out the red button, push out the yellow button. Then they yelled at me, “Wally put your mask on. Wally put your mask on. Wally put your mask on!” I didn’t feel giddy, I didn’t feel sick and then the doctor came in and put my mask on. Honey,’ she said, ‘it’s like I saw you and everyone else in beautiful colours. It really didn’t dawn on me until much later when I was giving a speech, that in those last couple of minutes, without oxygen, you only see grey.’

  She also hadn’t realised that her writing had deteriorated into a mess of scribbles. ‘That’s when you get in trouble and people have accidents. You should have seen the guys’ noses pressed up against the window as if to say, what was this girl going to do? Were they expecting my body to blow up? I’m no different than a guy. I did just as well.’

  During the centrifuge test, Wally had shown initiative. She knew that, as a civilian, she would not be given a G suit – the tight-fitting pressurised flight suit worn by pilots when certain manoeuvres caused them to experience G forces. These suits stopped blood pooling in the legs and feet and prevented the loss of blood, and therefore oxygen, to the brain, reducing the chances of blacking out.

  ‘So I called Mother and said: “I need your worst Merry Widow and a couple of girdles.”’ The Merry Widow was a strapless firm and form-fitting piece of underwear, popular in the 1950s, rather like a basque or a corset. ‘I made my own G suit. When I walked in all stiff they didn’t know what I had done so I never blacked out.’

  By the time I first interviewed Wally in 1997, she had applied to NASA’s astronaut programme several times but, without the requisite engineering or science qualifications, hadn’t succeeded. She wasn’t taking no for an answer even then. We parted and exchanged addresses so I could post her a cassette of the completed radio programme. Over the years, I exchanged occasional letters with Wally, Jerri Truhill and Irene Leverton. Truhill had given me a magnificent black-and-white photograph, which I framed, of her standing on the wing of a plane modelling a flight suit. Leverton wrote considered missives about her life in Arizona. Wally sent photographs with short, breezy notes, usually accompanied by smiley faces. I assumed that I would never see her again.

  By 2016 the world had improved for women, but for decades they had had to overcome barriers, including sexism, to pursue careers within the space industry. I wanted to tell this updated story, and sold a documentary to BBC World Service radio on the history of women in space. After making Right Stuff, Wrong Sex nineteen years earlier, the title chose itself: Women with the Right Stuff.

  At a meeting at BBC Broadcasting House in London to discuss the programme’s content, I listed potential interviewees who represented the different roles and achievements of women. They included Wally for the historical Mercury 13 perspective. I suggested Sarah Cruddas, a female space journalist and broadcaster like myself, as presenter. The commissioning editor, Steve Titherington, stopped me mid-pitch.

  ‘I know who the presenter should be.’

  To be honest I was flattered but not totally surprised. As a former BBC science correspondent, I had reported on TV news bulletins for almost a decade and presented BBC radio programmes on and off for over twenty years. After a few seconds considering how best to let him down gently, I said apologetically: ‘I’m afraid I want to produce.’

  ‘Not you,’ he replied, as if talking to an idiot. ‘Wally Funk.’

  There was a long silence. Not out of embarrassment but because I was blindsided. Frankly, it was impossible to picture harnessing Wally’s manic energy into a controlled interview situation, with her asking questions instead of answering them. Neither could I envisage her voice reduced to that of a BBC-style, radio presenter. A few years beforehand, I had interviewed Wally down the line for Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour about her plans to go into space with Virgin Galactic. Her voice was louder than I’d remembered; the answers longer and looser. This made interviewing and editing difficult. Reducing a ten-minute interview to six minutes was a cinch. Cutting a forty-minute interview to six was a nightmare. But it brought a renewed audience, yet again, to the story of the Mercury 13. It was as if history had collective amnesia every ten years.

  The other obstacle to Wally presenting was her distinctive speaking style. She emphasises CERTAIN words at unusual PARTS of a sentence and at a sound level ten decibels ABOVE one of the planes she f
lies.

  Clearly the commissioner had never heard Wally speak. As these thoughts ricocheted around my brain, I realised he was still waiting for a response. I stalled. ‘What made you suggest Wally?’

  His reply was unexpected. ‘I saw the way you smiled every time you mentioned her name.’

  Titherington was right. After meeting Wally it is impossible to think about her without smiling. But I also recalled that Wally belongs in the category of women, described in the film When Harry Met Sally, who are high-maintenance, but think they are low-maintenance. I recognise the traits, though mostly in hindsight. During the 1980s three boyfriends bought me David Plante’s book about the lives of Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell and Germaine Greer titled Difficult Women.

  Much as I liked Wally, I knew that working together would be challenging. Wally is a fiercely independent woman who has that protective sheen of a much-loved only child used to getting her own way. I am also a fiercely independent woman, but the eldest of six who grew up constantly in charge, often with responsibilities way beyond my age range. I knew even at that point that my patience would be put under immense stress producing a show with Wally as presenter.

  Sat at the BBC, mulling over what the commissioner had proposed, I realised that he had made an inspired choice. Producing an eccentric seventy-seven-year-old’s first radio documentary could potentially turn a good programme into an unforgettable one. Or it would be a disaster. Either way, my workload had just doubled.

  Months later, sat in Wally’s home in Grapevine, Texas, it was time to put that fear to the test. Since she had so much energy, I gave Wally a couple of the radio documentary links to read. These were the cues or introductions to our interviews that I’d already written before leaving the UK. Doing this now would at least give me an early indication of how recording the programme would work, and I could hear her read a script. Wally was a great interviewee, but not everyone can read a script, and I’d not yet heard her do this.