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.