Genesis

by Robert Zimmerman

  She and Faye Stafford, wife of astronaut Tom Stafford, teamed up and drove down to Clear Lake together. Nothing was there, neither homes nor schools nor shopping centers. “All we saw were cows and fields.” They found a real estate agent, purchased some land, and started construction. A dam was built and the swamp drained, and on the shores of this newly created lake the development of El Lago was born.

  Meanwhile, Marilyn Lovell was commuting back and forth from Virginia Beach to Houston, selling a home at one place while supervising construction of a new one at the other. The Houston house would be on the north shore of the same lake, in a small development called Timber Cove.

  Like Susan, she had backed her husband all the way when he decided to become an astronaut. Marilyn knew that she could have done little to change his mind. Nor did she wish to. She remembered how, when they both were teenagers, he would take her up to the rooftop of his apartment building and show her the constellations and stars. His eyes would shine as he gazed at the stars and talked of going there.

  By this time the Lovells had three children, Barbara, nine, Jay, seven, and Susan, four. Marilyn went to inspect the local rural school that they would attend, finding a old brick school with bare planks for a floor. The children wore cutoff jeans and were barefoot. The teacher had a paddle hanging on the wall for discipline. “I was mortified,” she remembered. Though Marilyn sent her children there at first, she -- along with the wave of new settlers from NASA, including scientists, astronauts, engineers, and designers -- quickly brought change to this roughhewn setting. Soon a new public school was built, with modern facilities.

  1953. Blanch Lovell holding Barbara, flanked by Marilyn and Jim. Credit: Lovell

  Next Marilyn started looking for a church to join. Though Jim had been raised Presbyterian and Marilyn was Lutheran, several of her new neighbors told her about a little country Episcopal church about ten miles to the north in a small town called La Porte.

  St. John’s Church was a small brick building located on the town’s main street. Its priest, Donald M. Raish, had spent most of the nearly fifty years of his life working in the Episcopal Church of the American Southwest. He had just become rector at St. John’s.

  The Lovells liked both this church and its soft-spoken rector, and quickly became church members.

  The Bormans meanwhile were still living in a rented house in Houston, waiting for their new house in El Lago to be finished. It was Christmas 1962, and they felt isolated living in a city. Both preferred the close-knit community of a military base.

  Each Sunday evening they would go to a nearby Houston Episcopal church for services. One Sunday another couple came up to them after church. “We know who you are!” the woman said with a grin. Jim and Margaret Elkins lived in Houston with their own three children, and had noticed how alone the Bormans seemed. They invited Frank and Susan to their home to have Christmas dinner. Very quickly the two couples hit it off, becoming close friends. They spent almost every weekend together, going to high school football games or to the Elkins’s lake house north of Houston to get away.

  At the same time, Susan Borman joined several other astronaut wives to create what they called an astronaut wives’ club. Even if they no longer lived on a military base with its community and traditions they could still recreate these in a civilian setting. They published a mimeographed newsletter and scheduled group activities for themselves and their families.

  Soon what had been cowfields in the Texas countryside was a thriving American town, no different from a hundred thousand other communities across the nation.

  * * *

  While the Bormans and Lovells were settling into the more comfortable but hectic public life of an astronaut’s family, Bill Anders was still struggling to get into the test pilot program. The Anders were now at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio where Bill attended the Air Force Institute of Technology.

  Not only did Bill work like mad taking nuclear engineering, he went to night school at Ohio State, studying aircraft stability and control. He also rose early each morning and went flying for several hours before breakfast, just to log more flight time.

  They now had three children, Alan, five, Glenn, four, and Gayle, one, and were living in their first home, a four bedroom brick “palace” purchased for under $15,000.

  Each night Bill and a number of the other student officers would gather in his study. Valerie would bring them food and coffee, and for hours they would review physics and engineering problems.

  Bill’s schedule was so tight that the only break he took was fifteen minutes each evening to eat dinner and watch the news. Sometimes one-year-old Gayle would crawl to Bill’s study door, lie on her belly and put her hands through the gap at the base of the door. Bill would see her fingers, come out to hold her for a while, then go back inside.

  For Valerie, the price of marrying a man who wanted to be an astronaut was as hard and unrelenting as her husband’s schedule. She, like Marilyn and Susan, tolerated miserable living conditions in the 1950’s in order to further her husband’s career. At Bill’s first assignment in Big Bend, Texas, the couple lived for a time in a tiny one-room storefront office, with no air conditioning and the only bedroom window made of glass bricks that couldn’t open. This was just as well, as the bedroom faced the town’s main street and “there was a cricket epidemic,” Valerie remembered. “The whole town was filled with black crickets everywhere.” Valerie, used to the comfortable San Diego climate, soon developed a kidney infection which was followed by infectious mononucleosis.

  Nor were the sacrifices she and the other wives faced merely discomfort and meager living conditions. They also sacrificed careers and university degrees. All three women attended college -- something few were able to do in the 1950’s. Wherever Valerie lived she enrolled at the nearest university, taking courses from astronomy to oceanography, simply because the subjects interested her. Later, when NASA did a background check on her husband to see if he was qualified to become an astronaut, it also investigated Valerie, making sure that she, like Marilyn and Susan, could handle the pressures and challenges she was certain to face. Just as he had to measure up, so did she.

  The women accepted these sacrifices for the sake of their husbands and children. They knew that the men they loved were unique, destined to achieve great things. And they knew that if they did their part, their respective spouse’s achievements might even be greater, for themselves and their nation.

  February, 1959. Valerie Anders lived in her grandmother's home in San Diego while

  Bill was stationed in Iceland. She holds Alan, with her grandmother Babette Prasser

  on the left and her mother Elsie Hoard on the right, holding Glen. Credit: Anders

  For the Anderses, the sacrifices and hard work paid off. Bill graduated from both Ohio State and the Institute of Technology with high honors and, having finally obtained the advanced degree that the test pilots’ school at Edwards demanded, he went back to reapply. In the intervening two years, however, the test pilot school had changed the rules. Now they didn’t want schooling, they wanted pilots with lots of flying experience. Had he not gone to school the last three years he would have been a shoo-in. Once again he was locked out.

  Nonetheless, he kept applying. The family moved to Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico where Bill became an engineer and flight instructor. There, he and a friend periodically took a plane and flew to Edwards to schmooze and play politics. Sometimes he flew demonstrations, even repeating the flying maneuvers required by the entrance exam.

  He might not have the flying time they wanted, but he could do anything in the air that anyone else could do. Bill Anders was determined not to take no for an answer.

  BERLIN

  On August 13th, 1962, the first anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall passed. Several thousand demonstrators gathered along the wall, throwing bottles and stones at the East German guards. At one point the crowd threw a paving stone throu
gh the window of the Soviet Intourist travel agency, located near the wall in West Berlin. The East Germans in turn responded with tear gas and water cannon.

  Few in America noticed. Two days earlier, on August 11th, the United States had been shocked by yet another Soviet first in space. In less than twenty- four hours the Soviets had launched their third and fourth cosmonauts into space. For three days Andrian Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich orbited the earth, talking and actually singing duets as their separate capsules passed each other in space.

  Once again American commentators were appalled at the seemingly insurmountable Soviet lead in space. Not only had the communists launched two rockets in quick succession, they kept two men in space for just under three and four days respectively, and their craft actually seemed to demonstrate an ability to perform a rendezvous in space.* Near the beginning of their mission the spacecraft were only four miles apart, and the cosmonauts reported they were close enough to see each other’s capsule.

  * Though Soviet newspapers made this claim, neither craft had the ability to maneuver in space, and were never piloted towards each other.

  A few commentators wondered whether Khrushchev had deliberately timed the two space shots to occur during the Berlin Wall’s first anniversary. Whatever his intentions, the space flights certainly dominated world news. With the safe return of the cosmonauts on August 15th the Soviet government triumphed their success, noting that “communism is scoring one victory after another in its peaceful competition with capitalism.”96 The New York Times, meanwhile, editorialized that “The Jules Verne journey of the two Soviet cosmonauts now safely back from their rendezvous in space. . .is a spectacular accomplishment, an amazing feat.”97

  While cosmonauts Nikolivich and Popovich were being lauded and celebrated in Moscow, two East Berliners decided they would make their own statement about the merits of communism.

  Peter Fechter, 18, a construction worker in East Berlin, had had enough of living behind the wall. As he wrote to his sister (who had fled to West Berlin in 1956), “Those swine have stepped up our work quotas again so we lose fifty to sixty pfennigs an hour and have to work ten hours to earn what we used to make in 8 1/2.”98

  On August 17th, four days after the wall’s first anniversary and two days after the return of the cosmonauts, he and co-worker Helmet Kulbeik broke for lunch. Today Peter’s mother had packed him boiled bacon and potatoes. It was the first time he had had bacon in four months.

  Then the two men walked over to a part of the wall very close to Checkpoint Charlie, the one remaining border crossing between West and East Berlin. Two days earlier they had scouted out the area and discovered a construction crew hard at work renovating an abandoned building that abutted the wall. Because the two youths also wore construction clothes, no one had questioned them as they entered the building and wandered from floor to floor. To their surprise, one ground floor window facing the Berlin Wall was not bricked up but was instead blocked only with barbed wire and wooden planks.

  Now they entered again and went straight to that window. They ripped out the boards and pulled the barbed wire clear.

  Before them was the hundred foot-wide barricade of barbed wire rolls leading to the eight foot-high wire fence of the wall. Patrolling that death strip were machine gun-carrying East German soldiers, who in the last year had killed forty-nine people trying to escape East Berlin.

  After what was almost certainly a long moment’s hesitation, both men made a sudden dash for freedom, tearing and stumbling their way through the jungle of barbed wire scattered across that deadman’s zone. Kulbeik managed to reach the wall first. He leaped upon the wire and climbed. Fechter was right behind him. On the East German side of the deadman’s zone, border guards unshouldered their rifles and screamed for the two men to halt. As Kulbeik pulled himself over the four strands of barbed wire at the wall’s top the guards opened fire. Fechter, who was halfway up the wall, was hit in the back and stomach. He screamed in pain, but held on. Kulbeik reached down to try and help him up, and for a second the two struggled to get Fechter over the top.

  Then Fechter fell back into the death strip. Unable to do anything to help him, Kulbeik jumped down into West Berlin and to freedom.

  Fechter lay there at the wall’s base, slowly bleeding to death. Though he was less than two feet from the American zone and in plain sight through the wires, there was nothing anyone could do. When several West Berliners started to climb the wire to help him the East German guards threw tear gas to drive them back. And American soldiers could only throw Fechter some bandages: they were forbidden to cross the wall into East German territory.

  On the East German side, the guards were afraid to come out and get him. He had fallen so close to the wall that they feared attack from the growing West German crowd just on the other side of the wire barrier.

  For almost an hour Fechter lay there, groaning in pain. After awhile his groans stopped.

  Finally, with heavy reinforcements covering them, the East German guards came out and carried Fechter’s body away -- the fiftieth person killed trying to breach the Berlin Wall. Within hours thousands gathered at the wall, and as they had four days earlier, they threw rocks and bottles at the East German guards.99

  Though Fechter’s death made front page news in America, it failed entirely to distract the world from the just-completed Soviet space triumph.100 Standing in Red Square before a huge crowd of citizens, Khrushchev and others repeatedly proclaimed communism’s supremacy. As cosmonaut Nikolayev noted to the crowd, “The group flight in outer space is one more vivid proof of the superiority of socialism over capitalism.”101

  Few could argue. The day before, D. Brainerd Holmes, director of NASA’s manned space programs at the time, told the press that the launch of the next U.S. manned flight would likely be delayed. Furthermore, he admitted that it would be years before the U.S. could launch two astronauts into space at the same time, simply because the U.S. only had one launchpad.102

  Thirteen years had passed since the Berlin airlift. Five years had passed since the dawn of the space race. One year had passed since the construction of the Berlin Wall. Despite the efforts of many in the West, it seemed that cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev might very well be right.

  5. “WELCOME TO THE MOON’S SPHERE.”

  Eight am (C.S.T), Monday morning, December 23, 1968. In the Apollo 8 capsule Jim Lovell was fast asleep, Frank Borman had just gotten up, and Bill Anders was at the controls. As he had on Sunday, Mike Collins started his shift with what he now called “the 23rd of December edition of the Interstellar Times,” a quick summary of some of the more interesting news items of the last few hours.

  He began by warning the astronauts that “there are only two more shopping days until Christmas,” then described how twenty-three convicts had escaped from a New Orleans prison, how President Johnson had sent the astronauts his congratulations, how a big blizzard had hit the Midwest, and how the football playoffs were shaping up.

  Borman asked, “How are the families doing, Mike?”

  This was not the kind of question that Frank Borman would usually ask during a mission. And since his voice and Bill Anders’s sounded were very much alike, thin altos compared to Lovell’s rich bass, Collins assumed Anders had asked the question. “They are doing just great, Bill; just talked to Valerie a few minutes ago.” He had called her from home, just before leaving for his shift.

  “That was Frank,” Borman said.

  “Oh, well, likewise with Susan,” Collins recovered. “I have not talked to her since last night.”

  “Roger.”

  For Susan Borman, the battle was not so much over fighting the worry and fear, but preventing anyone from finding out how afraid she was. Her solution was to dull her mind. She would mix herself a drink and try and play hostess as neighbors and friends arrived with their encouragement and food.

  Helping her were her two teenage sons. With the fearlessness of youth and the same boundless confidence of their fat
her, both boys were heedless of the dangers. Separated from his daily grind and high-pressure concerns, they didn’t understand the risk and were instead sure that everything would work out. This was simply his day job, and he enjoyed doing it.

  Their mother, however, was always close by, and they could see how obsessed and worried she was about the flight, almost to the exclusion of food and sleep. In fact, she had eaten so little since launch that at one point Fred sat down with her and demanded that Susan eat something. She shook her head. Food was the last thing on her mind.

  Undeterred, he put potato salad on a fork and thrust it at her. “Eat!” he insisted. When she still refused, he began to imitate how she would treat him when he would refuse food as a baby. “Open the hanger door, here comes the plane,” he sang, aiming the fork at her mouth like a airplane. “RrrrRRRrrRRRRR,” he rumbled, simulating the sound of a propeller plane.

  Susan laughed, and took a mouthful.103

  * * *

  Just as she had on Saturday night, Marilyn Lovell had difficulty sleeping Sunday. She had dozed, much like the astronauts, sleeping in short restless bursts. Periodically she would get up, go into the kitchen to listen to their voices on the squawk box while smoking another cigarette.

  Dawn finally arrived, and as scheduled she went to her Monday morning beauty parlor appointment. Then she did some shopping at the local grocery store. At some point that morning she went to visit the Borman and Anders homes.