Falling to Earth Read online

  The older students really whipped us into shape—if we could stand the pace. Many of the plebes couldn’t stand the pressure. Nearly half of my classmates dropped out before graduation. Some probably didn’t make it through the first day. For those of us who could handle the mental anguish, however, it changed our lives. If we did something wrong, the punishment was so harsh we would never do it again. The system made soldiers out of those who could handle discipline and were willing to work at it.

  We did a lot of physical training, because many of us were out of shape when we arrived. To gain entrance to West Point we only needed to pass a physical, not be amazing athletes. During my physical they confirmed that my heart was fine, which made me suspect that my mother had been playing some games with me earlier.

  Athletics was a required course, so most of us ended up in good shape. I started out on the cross-country team, and then switched to gymnastics for about a year and a half. I sweated in the gym every afternoon, but I was never that good. I worked hard at it and even lifted weights, yet I just didn’t have the right physical build. So they pulled me onto the cheerleading squad, which was considered pretty much a sport. I was head cheerleader for two years. I don’t know how many people can put both astronaut and cheerleader on their résumé, but I can.

  Morale building is a cheerleader’s job. Embarrassing the navy team before big football games was, therefore, a primary objective. In 1953 we snuck onto the Naval Academy grounds and stole their beloved mascot, Bill the goat, from his living quarters behind the stadium. We led him into the back of a convertible and almost made a clean getaway, until we stopped to get some gas. While we were filling up, the disgruntled goat stuck his horns clear through the convertible’s canvas top. We got away, but our cover was blown.

  We hid Bill in the countryside, but word got back to the Naval Academy that West Point cadets were to blame. Soon, the phone lines were buzzing between officials from both academies, and I hear that even President Eisenhower got involved. Bill was to be located and returned. We only complied when our commanding officer directly ordered us. Privately, despite all the ruckus we had caused, I think he was a little proud of us.

  On another occasion, we disguised one of our trucks before the game, painting it with navy colors. We planned to drive it in front of the navy grandstand then lead our West Point mascot, Hannibal the mule, out the back instead of the goat they would be expecting. It rained the night before, however, and the stunt came undone when the truck became stuck in the mud. Then, to make matters worse, we also lost the football game.

  Academically, West Point had a very fixed curriculum. The only class we could choose, as I recall, was a foreign language, which allowed me to stumble through French for a few years. Everything else was a canned program, because we all worked toward the same bachelor’s degree in military science. We took mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and other basic courses, but did not learn as much as students in other elite colleges. I had to make up for this deficit later on. Instead, we focused intently on military history and military topography. Of course, I had no time to practice the piano, so I gave it up for many years.

  My world shrank to within the walls of West Point. For the whole first year, we were not allowed to leave campus or go home. My parents scraped together the money to visit me at Christmas, driving the whole way and sleeping in a trailer. But even then, I could not leave the campus. The rules eased up a little in my second year; I could go home for Christmas and take a month’s leave in the summer. I also looked for rewarding diversions. In my second year I joined the cadet glee club. I had previously auditioned for the chapel choir, but the choirmaster had told me to confine my singing to the showers. At least, with the glee club, I could sing baritone in the background while someone with a better voice sang the lead.

  The glee club exemplified the great sense of camaraderie we felt at West Point. On one occasion we were asked to sing in New Orleans for a holiday celebration, and we were all set to stay in a downtown hotel. Then the hotel manager found out we had a couple of black cadets in our group, including our lead singer. Could they stay in another hotel, he asked. Hell, no! They were West Point cadets and therefore our brothers. We canceled the appearance. For all of our old tradition, West Point was ahead of 1950s America in many areas.

  The parades we held on Saturday mornings were so well performed that they brought tears to my eyes. The companies were organized by height, so when we marched down a street all of our hats were absolutely uniform; we could have laid a board across them. I was right in the middle of the height range, so I marched in the center of the parade. Passing down the streets of New York City with our academy band playing, which we did on special occasions, was a phenomenal experience. Our white pants were immaculate; they were so stiff with starch that the legs were stuck together. We had to break them apart with a bayonet so that we never messed up the crease. Then, to put them on without wrinkling, we hung from a bar while someone else pulled our pants up. We wore plumed hats, cross belts and sabers, like uniforms out of the Revolutionary War. We polished our shoes and brass until they shone like jewels. When you have two and a half thousand cadets all marching together in impeccable uniforms, it is truly an amazing sight. We wanted to make sure that the public who watched our parades would remember the event for the rest of their lives.

  The West Point honor code was equally impressive to me. We could not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who did. The reasoning behind the code was, when in battle and under great pressure, you had to be truthful so that your commander knew exactly what was going on. A lie could result in a defeat or the loss of many lives.

  We didn’t dare do anything that violated our honor. It applied not only if we were caught cheating ourselves, but also if we knew that someone else cheated and we didn’t say anything. With integrity came trust. At night, as we went to sleep, the older students would come around, knock on every door, and say, “Alright, sir?” We would reply with the same phrase, confirming that we were in bed with the lights out. They wouldn’t come in to check: we were trusted. Liars, however, were in big trouble. The rules were simple and unforgiving.

  I saw a graphic example of the academy’s discipline right after I arrived. I remember marching through the main part of the campus and noticing a whole bunch of guys standing along a porch in one of the residential buildings. They were dressed partly in uniforms and partly in civilian clothing, lounging around and not doing much of anything. At a highly regimented place like West Point, they looked extremely out of place. I soon found out they were waiting to leave; they were being expelled for violating the honor code. I was joining West Point right after a huge scandal had broken. More than eighty students were kicked out for cheating on academic tests. Most were connected to the academy’s football team, including the coach’s own son.

  I remember being very impressed that these cadets, even though they were great football players and very valuable to the school for their playing skills, were forced to leave. There were no gray areas: you just could not cheat. In my opinion, it was a great code to live by. I thought about it a lot, a couple of decades later, when I was kicked out of the astronaut office and accused of breaking some unwritten honor and professional judgment codes within NASA.

  On the other end of the honor scale, I learned, was the West Point graduating class of 1950. I started at West Point in the middle of the Korean War, and most of those young men had been sent to Korea a few short weeks after graduation. They were sent into combat with no time for the training that may have saved many of them, because the conflict escalated surprisingly fast. As a consequence, a high percentage of those students died in the war. I learned of two different tragedies: the honorable dead and wounded and the cheaters from the class that followed. It was a lot for a young kid like me to think about. I didn’t want to share the fate of either, but given the choice I think I would have chosen the honorable death.

  After my first year, we were allowed to venture int
o New York City alone for a couple of weekends each semester. My love of cars had not faded, so when the restrictions eased in my senior year I bought a new car with borrowed and saved money. We cadets received a monthly allowance, and while some was spent on uniforms and snack food, I scraped together enough to buy a 1955 convertible Chevy. I’d take that car out on the weekends whenever I could. The only thing my parents had to pay for while I was at West Point was my first set of uniforms, which cost them around $300. Other than that expense, they were off the hook.

  By my last year at West Point, life was pretty good. In fact, we lived like kings. We outranked everybody and probably got to be a little bit snobbish. We had started as the lowest of the low in our first year, then worked our way up through the ranks, and got to feeling pretty cocky about it—almost as if we were better than the majors and captains on the staff. Of course, when we left West Point, we found out very quickly that wasn’t the case. But in the meantime, for one golden glorious year as seniors, we enjoyed life at the top of the heap. I ended up militarily ranked number six in my class and made battalion commander, which meant I had three companies under me. I had many privileges and could pretty much come and go as I pleased, as long as my three companies were behaving. Officers who had formerly commanded me acted more like advisors now, and my life loosened up a great deal.

  At home for Christmas, still half in uniform, with my brothers and father

  I know I was considered for even higher positions because they made me the commander of a joint operation with the Naval Academy, even before my senior year. Yet my early resolve to keep my head down and stay out of trouble may have backfired on me. I didn’t make an impression on the key people. I did what I needed to do and tried to be helpful to guys who needed academic help. For example, I took one student who was failing in math under my wing, spent a lot of time with him, and he finally graduated. I guess that was more my way to do things: staying low-key and out of serious trouble.

  Even though socializing wasn’t on the agenda much, fortunately my life was not too monastic—which in my late teens and early twenties would have been a cruel torture. There were no women cadets at West Point then, so other than a few secretaries and nurses we never saw females around. But the academy sponsored a dance every Saturday night, and girls would come in from Vassar and the other nearby schools. Rather than “dating” them, this was a formal event organized by the colleges. The moment the dance ended, our female guests disappeared on a bus, never to be glimpsed again. We never made any real personal connection with any of them. They were generally much richer than we were, and since they were from exclusive girls’ colleges, I always felt that they disdained us a little. Some of them could be cruel. I vividly remember a cadet who had an unusual name introduced to one of these girls. When she heard his name, she laughed so hard and so long that eventually he had to just walk away.

  If I hadn’t been caught doing something inappropriate with a girl, I might have been given the prestigious job of commanding a regiment. It sounds quite shocking to write about the incident that way, so I had better explain. The story will give you an idea of how strict life was at West Point. During advanced infantry training in our second year, we were allowed free time on Saturday afternoon and on Sundays, so I invited a girl up to see me. We had dated a couple of times, but we weren’t serious; I am embarrassed to say I can’t even remember her name. We rowed a boat across a lake and joined a large group of people on the other side. At some point, I took her hand to help her along the shoreline where the footing was tricky. A tactical officer was sitting across the lake with a pair of binoculars, watching everybody, and spotted us holding hands. Horror of horrors! Such familiarity was a violation of academy rules, because it constituted a “public display of affection.” They did not fool around when it came to infractions of the rules. My punishment was eight hours of what they called “walking the area”—marching nonstop outside in full uniform, rifle on shoulder, whatever the weather. I would eventually hold hands again with a girl in public, but not for the rest of my time at West Point.

  One student, a year ahead of me, was a star. His name was Dave Scott and he was a regimental commander. The perfect cadet, he was at the very top in his class, with great grades and the commanding presence of a born military leader. I don’t remember meeting him in those years, since different regiments did not socialize much, but I heard about him. We would meet again, a decade later, at NASA.

  Despite the charms of guys like Dave Scott, I knew of one New York girl who had eyes only for me. It began, like many romances, on a blind date. I had a roommate at West Point from Astoria, Long Island, named Dick. He and I were really great buddies, and when we headed to New York I would stay at his house. One time Dick had a date with a girl, and a friend of hers tagged along, so they invited me to make up the numbers. The friend was a very cute, soft-spoken girl named Pamela Vander Beek. She was tall and slender, with entrancing brown eyes and beautifully long auburn hair that curled just a little at the end. I found her very easy to be around. She had a down-to-earth approach to life, with no pretensions, and we hit it off right from the start. We dated during my last two years at West Point.

  I found Pam’s family fascinating. They were one of the older Dutch families in New York, and many of the city’s institutions were run by the Dutch in those days. Her father worked at the old Hotel Astor, a historic hotel right on Times Square. All of the management staff at the hotel was Dutch. The Vander Beeks had, in the past, enjoyed wealth beyond a Michigan farm boy’s comprehension. Pam’s father had traveled to school every day in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes and married her mother back in the twenties. They were on their honeymoon in Europe when the stock market crashed and wiped out their wealth in one stroke. They managed the return trip to the States only because they had round-trip tickets. Having grown up in luxury, Pam’s father then had to go to work as a playground director for the city parks system, the only job he could find. However, the Dutch community all helped each other back then, and he ended up finding better work at the Hotel Astor as the purchasing agent, which was a very important job at the time.

  Pam, therefore, grew up with little money, but in a smart, sophisticated family used to great affluence. When I first met her, she worked in New York for a greeting card company and shared an apartment with a couple of other girls. On weekends we would get together in the city, or she’d ride a bus up to West Point to join me for a football game, to tour the school museum, or just take long walks. Of course, I would also take her to the Saturday night dance, where the army band would play old, slow songs like “Aura Lee” for us to dance to.

  Whenever I could get a weekend off in the summer, Pam and her parents would pick me up and we would go to the family’s private lake, up in the mountains near Binghamton. A lakeside cottage was one of the few things left from the family’s days of wealth. It was a great getaway where we could swim, boat, and rest on the shore without anyone else around who had not been specifically invited. A big crowd of people usually descended on weekends, and the Dutch chef from the hotel would come up and prepare dinners.

  It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my farming background, and a lot of fun after a strenuous week at West Point. I soon grew very close to Pam’s mother and father. They became like second parents to me and even loaned me money to help buy my car during my senior year.

  Pam and I married at the cadet chapel on the hill overlooking the West Point campus in 1955, just before I left the academy. Naturally, we had our reception at the Hotel Astor. I truly felt like I belonged as a member of Pam’s family, and that we had the same aspirations and dreams for the future. In retrospect, neither of us knew—or perhaps could have known—what a tough road it would be for us both. I dragged a kind, loving, and gentle girl into some hard places, where it was impossible for her to follow. Could we have known that was coming as we celebrated our wedding day? Probably not.

  Pam was my first serious girlfriend, and now she was my w
ife. The day I married, I was still a virgin. It wasn’t that I’d lacked the opportunities in high school. It just meant something special to me, so despite all my raging teenage hormones, I had waited. However, my patience meant I knew little about love and marriage.

  In retrospect, I was too young, too focused, and too ambitious to be a great husband back then. My ambitions, and the military life, simply would not allow a young love to grow and flourish. We were two naïve kids, headed for brutal military lives in distant outposts. I had no real business bringing this trusting girl along. But I didn’t know. We were in love and believed we could tough it out.

  In those first months, we couldn’t have been happier. Yet with my time at West Point ending, I’d also had to make some decisions about which branch of the service I wanted to join. The free education came with a price, and it was time to pay the military back for the years they had invested in me. Pam and I steeled ourselves for the unexpected. Military life was new to both of us: we had no personal experience or military family members to learn from. But I was ambitious and ready to dive in.

  During my first few years at West Point, I felt I would want to remain with the army. My idea of a glorious military career was to be the first guy charging up the hill in a battle, with all the troops behind me. In my final year, however, I began to change my mind. A couple of my tactical officers were from the air force, and they really started working on me, explaining how it was the place for a more technically minded guy like me. In the new jet era, the air force seemed like a glamorous service branch, too, and that also formed part of my decision. To be honest, however, I still wasn’t sure I would enjoy flying.