While in Rome, we had a private audience with Pope Paul VI. He was a tiny man, but had a special aura about him that only a few global leaders possess. We had an entourage of about twenty government people with us, and as he came down the line greeting us all, he stopped, looked me in the eye, and said, “Hmmm, I know you from somewhere.”
That flummoxed me. I think I would have remembered if I knew the Pope, and I didn’t. “You are very familiar,” he added, leaving me lost for words.
Was the Pope playing a “Gotcha” trick on me worthy of Wally Schirra? Then he remembered. He had seen me on Fred Rogers’ show. I didn’t know which was more surreaclass="underline" that the Pope thought he knew me or that he recognized me from American children’s television. To this day, I wonder if the Pope was playing a practical joke.
Our next visits were a real step into the unknown. Communist Eastern Europe was technically “the enemy” during the Cold War. Most of it was under the control of the Soviet Union—some parts more willingly than others—and Moscow was never too keen about friendly connections to the West. The international significance of the Apollo program made us the ideal ambassadors, it seemed, to journey there without tension. On these visits I grew to understand that the whole world appreciated our exploration of the moon. There may have been political disagreements, but when it came to the individual people who flew in space, it felt like we all cheered each other on.
I had more fun in the communist countries than I did anywhere else overseas. Our hosts were often reserved and formal at first, but soon loosened up. In fact, at one party in Poland we had the whole room, including our Polish hosts, playing an interesting Cold War version of hide-and-seek. We looked for, and found, all of the hidden microphones.
One night early in the visit, I decided to take a walk around the block with one of the ladies accompanying us from the State Department. As we stepped out of the lobby and headed down the street, we noticed a shadowy figure lurking behind us, wearing a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat. We stopped and looked at him. He also stopped and waited for us to grow bored. We started to walk again. He followed once again. We had a tail.
We beckoned him to join us; we would be glad of the company. But he wouldn’t come. So we jogged back, put ourselves on either side and forced him to walk along with us. It turned out that he was responsible for ensuring we didn’t inadvertently get into any trouble. Our hotel was across the street from a sensitive military defense building, and if we had wandered down the wrong alley we might have caused a diplomatic incident.
Our tail, I was told, was the number two person in the Polish secret police. He certainly had power. We would be having lunch with a university president or other important person, but when this little guy made a subtle hand signal, our hosts knew it was time to wrap up the hospitality. It was time for us to leave, however enjoyable the conversation. The guy had the country under his thumb.
And yet, on the last day of our trip, he pulled me to one side, and whispered, “Any chance you could find me a job in the United States?” I wonder what he was doing by the late 1980s, when communism finally crumbled in Poland.
In Yugoslavia we were guests of President Tito at his mountain resort in Bled. I grew to love skiing again while there. It had been years since I’d had time to indulge myself in the sport. We also rode horse-drawn sleighs and took hunting trips in the beautiful forests. Every time we went out to dinner, we ended up singing and dancing with the locals. They were great people, and I had a ball.
Of all the travel, meeting kings, queens and world leaders, the most meaningful trip to me was the visit back to my home town of Jackson. It was literally a red-carpet welcome, and the press reported that more than 21,000 people turned up to see me. I rode through town in an open-top limousine with my daughters next to me, waving at the crowds, while four jets flew over in salute. I ended up staying for a few days at my parents’ house. As I turned in for the first night back home, I could only marvel at how much I had experienced since I left town.
In February of 1972 the president welcomed us back to the White House, to report on our overseas trips. He seemed keen to hear about our impressions of the communist countries we had visited. After we told him about our travels, he asked where we would like to visit next. “Mars!” I replied with a laugh, a not-too-subtle push for him to increase the NASA budget. The whole room burst out laughing.
“Well, I must tell you, we’re awfully proud of you,” the president added. “There are lots of people here who appreciate you. And there is still a fascination with it … a fascination with you as people.” He then talked with enthusiasm about the space shuttle and how it could increase the kind of international cooperation we’d been encouraging on our trip. “We’ll be calling on you!” he added as we left the Oval Office.
You may wonder how I can recall this conversation so clearly. Well, it’s not every day that the president tells you he is proud of you. But there is another reason. President Nixon secretly recorded his phone calls and meetings at the time. Some of those tapes would come back to haunt him, forcing him to resign in shame just two years later. Other recordings are more innocuous, and they include our meeting that day. Listening to it now—and it has long been declassified—more than anything I hear laughter, as we relaxed and enjoyed the company of a man praising us for our efforts to represent our country, both in space and overseas.
I had done little public relations before the flight. The travels after our mission took up most of the year, so I felt very seasoned when I returned to Houston at long last. However, the extra publicity brought some unwanted attention: before long, I discovered that I had my first stalker.
CHAPTER 12
RUIN
I was eager to get back to work. After all, pilots and astronauts want to fly, not give speeches. But as I searched for my next role in Houston, I began to receive disturbing letters from a woman in England. She was in a mental hospital and wrote to me about imaginary animals—mostly elephants, I recall—that walked through her room and on the walls. I turned the letters over to our security officers.
The letters kept coming. She was now out of hospital, she told me. One letter enclosed the key to her apartment and told me to visit when I was next in Europe. I continued to turn over the letters to security.
The last letter said, “I am on my way.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I grew very concerned. My two young daughters lived right across the street from the space center, and there had been plenty of press about the location of my space-age bachelor pad. We wouldn’t be hard to find. The security team who guarded the space center stayed alert.
A couple of days after the last letter, they came across the woman walking along the fence line of the center. I don’t know how they dealt with her. I was told that they put her on an airplane back to England. I never heard from her again. If this was fame, I was not sure I wanted it.
At least there was work to do again. Dave, Jim, and I were assigned as the backup crew for Apollo 17, which would attempt the final lunar landing. Heading back into training so fast was normally a sign that Deke was pleased with your work, and you would soon rotate into a prime crew once again. This time, however, was a little bittersweet. After Apollo 17, there would be nothing left to fly. We were asked because we were fully trained, not because there was any prospect of a future moon flight.
Still, I was pleased. I intended to stick around, and the only other work then available in Houston was advanced design work on the space shuttle. I wasn’t keen on shuffling paper around the office. As a backup crewmember I’d train on real hardware instead. And if something happened to Ron Evans, on the prime crew, I’d head back to the moon for the second year running. Ron was training to perform a spacewalk and run a SIM bay. I would have enjoyed doing it again, flying over different regions of the moon.