I was jolted awake by a Hawaiian war chant piped over the radio by mission control. Back in Houston, the flight surgeons saw my heart rate shoot up as the music blasted me into alertness. “That got everybody up!” Dave retorted. But the tune was appropriate, as only a few hours remained until we planned to splash down in the Pacific Ocean, a couple of hundred miles north of the Hawaiian Islands.
“We just got our first view of the Earth this morning,” Dave reported, “and can you believe it’s getting larger and it’s getting smaller? We see just a very, very thin sliver of a very large round ball.”
Earth didn’t seem to grow much in our window until that day. Like any massive but distant object, it doesn’t grow much as you draw close until the last few moments, when it looms up at you. In these last hours, the crescent Earth grew fast against the backdrop of space. It was clear we would hit it, and my calculations showed we would strike our target at the right place and the right angle.
I shut off the SIM bay experiments for the last time, retracted the booms, and powered down the experiments one by one. They had done an outstanding job, and in a few hours’ time they would become shooting stars streaking through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up, abandoned. But the data they had returned would keep scientists busy for years.
Houston, cryptically, asked both Dave and Jim to keep their heart rate monitors on all the way through reentry. They were not concerned about mine. Dave complied, still unaware of the reason.
We made one last minor change in our course—a burn of a few seconds with our little thrusters—and I headed back to the optics to check star alignments and confirm we were perfectly on course. We could have come back fine without firing the thrusters, but the small maneuver placed us in the middle of our reentry corridor. All looked good.
“I thought we’d let you know, from our preliminary tracking, you’re sitting right in the center of the corridor now,” mission control confirmed.
“Great! That’s a nice place to be!” Dave replied.
We grew busier inside the spacecraft, checking all the systems. Batteries would feed power to explosive devices that hurled out our parachutes, and they needed to work in a precise and accurate sequence for us to survive. I tested Endeavour’s reentry thrusters. They eventually responded with a reassuring snapping sound, and I could see the flashes of flame outside the windows as I pulsed them.
It was time to separate from the enormous service module which, in addition to the SIM bay, had carried our main rocket engine and all of the consumables we needed for the trip. I flipped a switch, and in a carefully orchestrated and speedy sequence, pyrotechnic devices neatly severed the water, oxygen, and electrical connections between the two modules. Then I heard a thunk as the service module separated and drifted away from us. “We got a good sep,” I reported to mission control.
I turned the lights down in the spacecraft a little and looked out of the windows. I hoped to use Earth’s horizon to orient myself. By now we were racing toward the shadowed side of the globe, a black sphere against a black sky. And yet if I looked carefully, I could see the milky, faintly glowing horizon looming in my window.
The explosive separation from the service module had jolted some little items loose from hiding places in the cabin, and some of them now floated by our faces. “Here, my friend, is a lunar rock,” Dave noted, spotting a moon nugget that must have lurked somewhere in the spacecraft for days.
All that remained now of the enormous rocket launched from Florida was our little Endeavour command module, its heat shield exposed for the first time during the mission and pointed firmly in our direction of flight. We plunged down into the darkness at more than thirty thousand feet per second and waited for the first sign that we had reached the outer fringes of Earth’s atmosphere.
“Look out the window, and you see ionization,” Jim remarked. The heat shield behind our backs was hitting the first wisps of air. Faint yellow-orange glowing tendrils appeared outside the windows as we pushed through the atmosphere and lit the air into hot plasma.
We broke into daylight. “Oh, that’s the Earth down there, baby!” I cried, as I peered through the glow and began to see familiar features. I could clearly see Alaska, down to Japan and beyond, a huge sweep of the Northern Hemisphere.
“Can you see it?” Jim asked us, straining for a view from his couch.
“Sure as hell can,” Dave confirmed. “It’s big and real!”
I had angled the spacecraft precisely so that our heat shield dug into the atmosphere. I began to feel a very gradual deceleration, a little like putting on the brakes when driving. I watched the earth zip by below us unbelievably fast. “Oh, man, are we moving, too!” I cried. “Son of a gun! Shee-hoo!”
Endeavour was designed with an offset center of gravity, so it had a little bit of lift. Not much, but enough to maneuver. By digging into the atmosphere, we made sure we didn’t skip back out into space again. The glow outside our windows increased, as did the feeling of deceleration. Looking up, I could see a long glowing trail behind us, like a lit neon tube, with flashes of pink, green, red, and yellow. We were slowing dramatically after our plunge through space, but still raced across the face of the planet.
“Sure are a lot of mountains down there,” I exclaimed, fascinated. “How about that!”
“I think that’s Alaska out there,” Jim added, staring at upside-down peaks. “That would be right, wouldn’t it?”
The ionization built up until we lost the ability to transmit radio signals to Houston. Not that they could help us now. The G-forces increased, and the fiery orange glow outside the spacecraft brightened. I could see the trails of glowing gases swirl as they changed path around our blunt spacecraft and twisted away behind us in corkscrewing patterns.
After almost two weeks of floating freely, the deceleration built until I weighed six times as much as on Earth. Lying in the couch, however, meant the force was on my chest so I didn’t really notice it. Besides, I was too excited. But Jim wasn’t doing so well and felt like he was unable to move and close to blacking out. There was nothing he could do but endure.
Once there was no danger we’d skip out of the atmosphere, I followed a precise course to take us to our targeted splashdown site. Closely monitoring my instruments, I pulsed our thrusters to roll the spacecraft, using the heat shield as a kind of wing to change our lift. The pressure on our chests eased a little. Leveling off our path, we eased our downward plunge and slid through the atmosphere as I maneuvered left and right.
Mission control could hear us on the radio again. “Everybody’s in fine shape,” Dave reported with relief.
“Good to hear you again!” Bob Parker replied.
We slowed to ten thousand feet per second. “One hundred miles to go,” I reported, as condensation rained down from the docking tunnel above us and soaked Dave in the center couch. Soon I was not able to maintain any more horizontal movement; gravity pulled our slowing spacecraft down. We dropped like a rock.
Around twenty-four thousand feet above the ocean, the heat shield cover at the top of the spacecraft whipped away and two small drogue parachutes fired out to reduce our speed. “Good drogue,” I reported, feeling the tug on Endeavour as I saw the reassuring shapes open above us through my window. As we fell into thicker atmosphere, the pressure outside grew, and fresh air began to squirt into the cabin through a special valve.
Once the drogue chutes had done their job, they were released at around ten thousand feet. Three more small parachutes then popped open and pulled out our large red-and-white main parachutes. “And the mains are out—three,” I reported. “The mains are opening.” I felt the spacecraft slow and sway as the chutes smoothly opened.
“CM propellant to dump,” Jim added. The fuel lines of our now-useless thrusters were still full of dangerous chemicals, and flight planners believed it was safer to vent them before we hit the water. The chemicals would burn as soon as they touched each other, and if we ruptured a fuel line on splashdown, we could have a nasty fire or explosion. Venting had worked fine on every prior mission. A large rising red cloud of gas obscured my view of the parachutes as we dumped the propellants overboard.
Helicopters from the USS Okinawa, the assault ship sent to recover us, had us in sight and circled as we fell closer to the ocean. “It appears that one of your main chutes is streaming,” one pilot reported on the radio, alarmed. “I can only see two main chutes, and one appears to be streaming.”
Oh, shit. “Do we have three, Al?” Jim asked me with concern.
“We got two!” I told him. The red cloud had cleared, and I thought I could see widening holes in one of our parachutes, collapsing it into a useless strip of cloth. “We’ve got a streamer on one.”
I can only guess what happened. There was very little wind that day, and when we vented the propellant, the corrosive, toxic cloud rose right up into the chute and ate away the material and shroud lines. We prepared ourselves for a hard landing.
The disturbing sight of our parachute failing as we neared splashdown
We could still land on two chutes; the third was more of a safety margin—a margin we had just lost. As I continued to look at the chutes, to my horror I thought I could see holes developing in a second chute, too. If it failed, we’d be in trouble.
Pilots on the circling helicopters grew excited. “You have a streamed chute. Stand by for a hard impact,” they told us. We already knew. There was nothing they could do to help us now, and we needed to concentrate. I wished they would stop chattering; I needed to focus.
Wham! We hit the ocean hard, gouging deep into water that splashed high over the cabin windows before we bobbed back up to the surface. Dave opened another air vent to the outside and got a face full of sea water, soaking him again. I quickly powered down the spacecraft. The second chute had held out long enough. We were back. We’d made it.
Those circling helicopters were quick. It seemed we’d no sooner splashed down than they had deployed Navy SEAL divers into the water. The SEALs busily attached an inflatable collar around the spacecraft as well as a raft for us to climb into. I saw a diver’s face at the window; he then knocked on the hatch. I wasn’t sure why—was he being polite and wanted us to say “Come in” first?
Soon he had the hatch open and threw in some life preservers which we put on. We gave him a quick thumbs-up to tell him we were okay. The ocean was calm, and a warm breeze came in through the hatchway. After a final check of the cabin, it was time to leave.
Dave and Jim climbed out. I was the last to exit and I took a final look around my home for the last two weeks. Now back on earth, it seemed impossibly tiny. What an amazing adventure I’d had in this little cabin. I’d been focused all day on getting us back to earth. Now that I was here, and safe, I wished I were back in space again, flying solo in the quiet and solitude.
Time to go. Feeling a little shaky, I climbed out of the hatch and into the waiting life raft. It felt warm and sunny out there, and the blue ocean looked beautiful. Our once-immaculate Endeavour was now a charred orange-brown color, with almost all of the reflective insulation burned away, stained darkly around the thruster jets. It would never fly again.
A helicopter hovered over us, and one by one winched us up. I left with some concern, as the diving team could not get Endeavour’s hatch completely closed. I thought of the priceless moon samples in there and hoped a rogue wave would not get them wet—or worse, sink the spacecraft.
“Astronaut Alfred Worden is in the aircraft,” the helicopter team announced. Since I was the last one to be winched up, this announcement was the signal for the flight controllers back in Houston to pass around little American flags and cigars. They wouldn’t begin to celebrate yet, however, not until we had safely landed on the deck of the Okinawa.
As the ship came into view, we scrambled to put on fresh blue flight suits, clean sneakers, and baseball hats. In our agreed explorer style, we had stayed unshaven. For dark-haired guys like Dave and Jim, that was obvious. For a light-haired guy like me, my stubble wasn’t easy to see.
We were freshly dressed by the time our helicopter landed on the deck of the ship. But I felt concerned about my legs. I had been weightless for two weeks, and now I’d have to walk across the deck in front of hundreds of cheering sailors, important dignitaries, and the world’s media. I hoped I wouldn’t fall flat on my ass.
The Apollo 15 mission ends as I climb out of our charred spacecraft.
I had to consciously tell myself how to walk. My legs didn’t work the way they should; I had lost the automatic sense of how to step. I had taken it for granted all my life, but after two weeks I’d forgotten. Jim looked a little shaky, too. I had to concentrate hard—left leg, right leg—as we strode down the red carpet toward the welcoming committee.
General Lucius Clay, commander in chief of Pacific air forces, was one of the dignitaries waiting to welcome us.
“It’s certainly been a wonderful and historic mission,” he said with a smile, “and I can’t help but also compliment you on your superb selection of music. Thank you, Colonel Scott.”
I suppressed a grin. A few days ago, around the moon, Dave had chewed me out for playing the air force anthem during his liftoff. Now he had to accept the congratulations of air force dignitaries for playing it.
It was my turn to speak. I forced my legs into motion and shuffled up to the microphone. “It’s not that I’m shaky, it’s just that I don’t have my sea legs yet,” I began. “We just finished probably the most fantastic twelve days I’ve ever had in my life. And I guess only one thing surpasses the excitement and the intense feeling I had on the flight, and that was sort of the feeling I had when I saw you all today. It sure is nice to be back, and it sure is good to see you all. Thanks a bunch for the pickup!”
Unshaven, I thank the welcoming crowd on the deck of the ship.
The doctors were eager to get their hands on us and led us away for postflight tests. Even when lying down on a platform, we could feel that our heart rates were higher than normal. Our bodies were readjusting to gravity. The flight surgeons walked us around and took good care of us. We appreciated it, as we felt pretty odd. But we were still told nothing about the in-flight heart concerns.
For the first time, I noticed that Dave’s fingernails were black. He’d tightened up his spacesuit gloves so he could have a better feel at the end of his fingers when working on the lunar surface. As a result, he’d bruised and blackened them badly. He must have been in pain all the way back from the moon, but I had never known. Man, that guy was a hard driver. He was so goal oriented during the mission and would not give up, no matter what the barriers were. I had to admire that about him.
At last, after the medical checks, we could have a shower—our first in two weeks. Dave and Jim were still grimy with moon dust, and I didn’t smell too good either. Showers aboard ship were small and boxy, with rough military soap and towels. It was nothing luxurious. But after two weeks that warm water felt like one of the best showers of my life.
Time for lunch in the captain’s wardroom. The food on the flight had been good enough, but I was ready for something more substantial. A big, juicy steak awaited me, which I wolfed down. Dave and I had talked about ice cream all the way back from the moon, and now was our chance to be decadent. Jim didn’t eat much, but Dave and I slurped down ice cream like we were little kids.
I was full, and still not used to walking. But the celebrations weren’t over. The ship had about seven different compartments, each with its own set of workers, and each wanted to welcome us. So we toured them all. Every compartment had baked a special cake. I felt pretty drained by then from the exertion, but I cheered up when I saw the friendly reception. I had a ball, probably on a sugar high from seven slices of cake.
We received the good news that Endeavour had been brought aboard the ship without any water slopping through the hatch. It had been a long and eventful day. I had woken up more than sixty thousand miles from planet Earth and ended my day on a ship journeying south toward Honolulu. It was time to get some sleep.
I woke up to the sound of clanging. Our berth was right below the flight deck, and those guys started work early. A military ship is never a quiet place. I felt much better, though, and very well rested. Jim, however, still looked tired. He hadn’t slept well, he explained, because of the noise and also because he still felt odd, like his head was pointing toward the floor, even when he was sleeping flat.
We headed up to the deck, and there was the beautiful Hawaiian island of Oahu. A helicopter waited to take us the short journey to Hickam Air Force Base. Touching down, I stepped off the helicopter and onto solid ground for the first time since I had made my way to the launchpad in Florida. It felt good to truly be back on earth once again.
A crowd of thousands awaited us, along with some local dignitaries, so we gave some more brief speeches and thanked them. But there was no time in the schedule to enjoy Hawaii. After some hurried farewells, we were stuffed into a C-141 cargo plane for the long flight back to Houston.
By this point in the mission, I had forgotten all about the space covers deal Dave had arranged. Until we were back on earth, I’d had no reason to think about them for months.
But now here they were, as Dave pulled them out in the C-141. He’d not only had them stamped and postmarked to note the day of launch, he’d also managed to get them postmarked on the ship the day we splashed down. I looked at them with interest. I’d never seen one before. I’d never even seen the design.
While aboard ship, Dave had mentioned that he would have his covers stamped on the Okinawa with the splashdown date. Good idea, I thought. We hadn’t gone back into Endeavour after splashdown, but a team of technicians had removed all the important items ready to transport to Houston. They returned our PPKs to us, which was standard procedure. So I had my covers postmarked. Mine were not postmarked on launch day because they had been stowed in my PPK inside the spacecraft, as per regulations.
Then there was another surprise for Jim and me. We’d agreed with Dave to carry a hundred covers for Eiermann. But Dave unexpectedly pulled out a pile of about four hundred.
Don’t worry, Dave explained. He’d had another hundred made for each of us. We should keep them for ourselves until we were all out of the space program, and until Eiermann and Sieger had concluded their business. Otherwise we’d be undercutting them.
Dave was well prepared; he pulled out special pens for us to sign all of the covers. It was a smooth flight, and a long one, so we had plenty of time to sit there and sign away. I thought nothing of it. Once we landed I took my hundred covers with me to put in my safety deposit box. Jim took his, and Dave kept about two hundred, his own and the covers to send to Eiermann. It was done. I forgot all about them once again. In retrospect, I should have opened the door and thrown them out of the plane.
Perhaps it was an ominous sign of things to come with those covers, but it was dark and rainy when we touched down at Ellington Field. Despite the weather a crowd of thousands had turned out, dressed in raincoats and carrying umbrellas. It was time to give another quick speech. “I’m on the last leg of a trip from Cape Kennedy to Houston,” I joked, “and I saw some interesting things along the way!”
“We went as Americans,” I summed up, “but we really did it for all mankind.” These weren’t just PR words—I really meant them. It was also my opportunity to begin to thank the tens of thousands of people in Houston and around the world who had helped us with our flight. We got the glory, but we couldn’t have done it without an enormous team. I was—and I remain—very grateful to them.
Deke Slayton also welcomed us and added his congratulations for a great job. To know I had pleased him meant more than all the other praise showered on us. He was usually sparing with congratulations, which was a good thing. When he gave it, you knew he meant it.
At last I spotted Merrill and Alison, my beloved daughters, who ran over to give me an enormous hug. They had been caught up in the excitement of Dad flying to the moon and were thrilled to see me again. I had missed them a lot—and boy, did I have some stories to tell them.
My parents were still in town. My father, so teary-eyed and emotional when I launched, was back to his normal self. “You’re back safe,” he whispered to me, “and I’m glad.”
Have you ever been away on a long vacation? You’ll know the feeling when you first put the key in the door of your home and then close it behind you. After such an eventful time, the apartment seemed so quiet. Everything was where I had left it. I had mail to sort through, chores to do. It was time to get back to normal life.
I had a strange experience the morning after I came home. When I walked out of my apartment door in the early morning to grab my newspaper, I saw the moon in the sky. It shocked me to see it. It was bizarre to think that I was there just a few days before, flying across its peaks and valleys. The moon looked so different now: so very far away. It really gave me a new perspective on how far we had traveled.
I’d been asked to skip breakfast that morning, as I headed back to my workplace for some more medical tests. Then we began many, many days of debriefings. The mission planners wanted to go over every detail of our flight plan while it was still fresh in our minds. So we sat around a table and talked through every moment of the mission, reliving it for the engineers. We spent about as long debriefing as we had flying the mission. It also took us that long for our bodies to get back to normal.
For several days I had to really watch how I walked and how I reached for something. It felt harder learning to adjust to Earth than it was to adjust to space, something mentally to do with coming home. In space, I was very aware of learning new ways of moving. Returning to Earth, everything felt familiar, so I relaxed and didn’t think about it. I would subconsciously push on a table to float away or try and leave an object hanging in midair. I had to teach myself how to live in Earth’s gravity again.
Of the three of us, Jim was in the worst shape. He was still unsteady on his feet and felt off balance when he lay down to sleep. I’d always thought of him as the weight-lifting, exercise-conscious guy, so I was surprised to see him so worn out.
Then, in the debriefing period, I was finally told what had happened to him during the flight. I felt confused, more than anything else. Why hadn’t they told us during the mission? There were ways we could have talked about private medical matters with the ground without the whole world listening in. I never got a good answer.
Dave was also having trouble sleeping because of an ache in his shoulder, something which our flight surgeons dismissed. But Dee O’Hara arranged for some private treatment and he improved. I had trouble sleeping for a different reason. I couldn’t get all the damn people out of my apartment.
Unlike the crews of earlier moon missions, we did not enter any medical quarantine, because the doctors had decided there was no risk of any possible moon germs returning with us. I would almost have welcomed the quarantine, because we could have debriefed without any distractions.
As it was, I would go to work, debrief all day, and there was always something going on when I got home at night. Many of the people in my apartment complex would drop by for a drink and a talk. They just wanted to be around somebody who had returned from the moon. I’ve always been a social guy and enjoyed their company, but eventually I had to kick them out every evening.
Then I would sit in my living room, turn all the lights out, and still not feel sleepy. I was overtired. I would finally get around five hours’ sleep, drag myself out of bed, and shuffle back to the debriefings day after day.
With three worn-out astronauts, the debriefings soon became dull. At first, I felt proud to talk about what we’d done. Under Dave’s excellent command, we’d really done our jobs, and felt delighted with the way things had turned out. The mission had been what Apollo was truly all about.
But after a few days of constant talking, I grew wearier. The room was windowless and the sessions were long. Ironically, the mission was tough to discuss since it had gone according to plan—there was little new to say. Much of the debriefing was record keeping, so planners could match the scientific data and photos with specific locations and times in the flight plan. Each mission controller asked endless questions about his own area of responsibility.
I only really enjoyed my conversations with Farouk, who was like a kid in a candy store when I shared what I had learned. But even he was being pulled in two directions: he had to brief the crew of the next mission, Apollo 16. I told him everything I could to help prepare them.
I would also have loved to talk more with the scientists responsible for all the SIM bay experiments. But first they needed to work on the raw data before finding time to talk to me. They also needed to concentrate on Apollo 16.
Even though I talked about the flight every day at work, the mission began to take on an air of unreality. It was as if I had gone to my father’s theater as a child and become totally immersed in a movie, forgetting there was another world out there. Now the movie was over, and I was out on the street as cars and people went by, back in the real world again. The moon flight was an episode in my life that felt totally out of context; I didn’t know how to place it in my mind.
I would sit in my living room at night, wide awake. It was quiet and peaceful, but my brain still went a mile a minute. So I grabbed some old coffee-stained legal pads and began to write down my vivid impressions of our flight. Unlike the technical debriefing, I relived the flight in emotions and remembered images. The words flowed freely and easily, and after letting them sit to one side for a while, I realized I had written something that might best be described as poetry.
I didn’t do anything with those papers for years. But when I mentioned them to some friends in a Houston poetry group, they grew excited about the first poems written by someone who had traveled to the moon. They said I should publish them. I left the poems in a drawer for a few more years, but eventually I did publish them, in a volume called Hello Earth: Greetings from Endeavour.
The poems are about as good as you might expect from a pilot. I hope I did a better job than a poet would if asked to fly a jet with no training. And on those long nights when I couldn’t sleep, the writing helped me. It was my own personal, emotional debriefing.
I went to the office every day and life seemed to return to normal. The debriefings only lasted a few weeks. Then it was time for NASA to send us on our next mission. This assignment would last for the rest of the year, and this time it was all about public relations. NASA needed to keep the tax dollars flowing. Sending us around the country, then around the world, allowed them to celebrate and show off their successes.
Our first stop, in early September, was Washington, D.C. Vice President Agnew decorated each of us with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award that NASA could bestow upon us. He was extremely friendly and made us feel very special. The next day, we headed to the Capitol building. From the podium where so many historic speeches had been given, we addressed a joint meeting of Congress, an unusual honor for an Apollo crew, given only to Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 before us. This experience certainly felt a little different from office work.
We were escorted into the chamber by a group of politicians including Congressman Chuck Chamberlain, who had helped me attend West Point all those years before, and Congressman Gerald Ford, also from Michigan. I’d cross paths with Ford again before too long, under very different circumstances.
Carl Albert, the Speaker of the House, introduced us in some of the most glowing words I could recall. “It is our great honor today to welcome to this chamber the recently returned heroes of Apollo 15’s epic journey into space,” he began. “I feel privileged to introduce to you three Americans who are such a credit to their country and who represent the highest qualities of human aspiration and courage.”
Oh shit, I thought to myself, how the hell do I give a speech to match that introduction?
I had a little time to think about it while Dave made his remarks. They were excellent, inspiring, and a tough act to follow. But then Dave mentioned “my trusted colleague, Colonel Al Worden.” It was my turn.
“First off, let me say I am overwhelmed by the reception. It is fantastic. I am proud to be an American. I am proud to be part of the Apollo 15 flight.”
So far, so good. Time for me to share a message of what I experienced in space, beginning with our launch.
“Our view out of the window was of an area surrounding Cape Kennedy and some of the ocean. After the launch the first thing we noticed, particularly when we got into Earth orbit, was that we had a further view—we were further away from the Earth, and our view was expanding. We did not see any area around Cape Kennedy. What we saw were continents and oceans, a great deal of the horizon. After we left Earth orbit, and for the remainder of our flight, our view was one of the Earth. Our horizons were not limited to the area around us during the flight. We saw the Earth as a single planet. There is a oneness about the Earth that we do not see from the ground. We do not see any boundaries from that particular vantage point. We do not see any differences in race, or religion, or political beliefs.
“The thought struck me that there was an analogy between the Earth and between Endeavour. We were a team of three living in a spacecraft called Endeavour. We are all billions of people living on spacecraft Earth. We had to work as a team to survive and to maintain our own household during the flight. We must work as a team to maintain our household and to maintain our home called Earth.
“One thing is quite evident—particularly during the flight—our destinies were bound together by what we did in the flight. We relied on each other; we worked with each other. The same thing must be true on Earth. We must work together. We must rely on each other. We must work together as a team for Earth.
“We had the very crude beginnings of some tools to help us accomplish this goal on our flight. We carried many scientific instruments—a very crude beginning, admittedly—to do the kinds of work that have to be done to clean up spacecraft Earth. We carried scientific instruments that measured remotely. We carried some cameras that took pictures for analysis. As I said, this is a very crude beginning, but it leads into the kinds of things that can be done in a small way to help clean up our spacecraft Earth.
“We cannot all go to the moon. The three of us were very fortunate to have gone. We sincerely hope that we can be your eyes and ears in providing the perspective of Earth that we had. Thank you.”
Jim added his remarks, and then the chamber rose and gave us a thunderous standing ovation. I felt I had given a good speech, not only a perspective on what my government needed to do, but also using the close teamwork of my crew as an example. That day, I couldn’t have felt closer to Dave and Jim while we shared in this extraordinary outpouring of praise.
President Nixon had called us while we were on the Okinawa and invited us to dinner at the White House. We were happy to accept. It was standard practice for invitees to bring their wives to dinner, too. Dave arrived with his wife, Lurton, and Jim brought Mary. I was single. It would have been fun to invite a date. After all, “Want to join me for dinner with the president?” was an unbeatable pickup line. But I doubt my NASA bosses would have liked that.
We all brought along our children, and the kids were taken upstairs for dinner. Before the evening was over, the president gave them a special tour. He was a great historian, steeped in the history of the White House. He took a real delight in taking the kids up to what looked like blank walls, and pointing out a near-invisible line in the paint. Then he’d push on the wall, and a secret bathroom would be revealed. Nixon laughed with pleasure as he entertained the children. He was just wonderful to them.
As I stand between Dave and Jim, my speech receives a standing ovation from Congress.
Before we sat down to dinner, we stood with the president on the balcony that overlooked the South Lawn. As we looked at the city lights, Nixon told his butler to fetch his hundred-year-old scotch. The butler quietly reminded him that there was only a tiny amount left. The president didn’t care—it was an appropriate occasion to finish it, he declared. So we gazed at the skyline and raised our glasses in a toast.
It is strange to think now, but all five of the men who sat down to dinner that night—the president, the vice president, and the Apollo 15 crew—were marked for a dramatic fall from grace. At the time, all of us were riding high: Nixon and Agnew were on course to win a second term by a landslide the next year, and we were being honored by them with this special dinner.
If only we could have foreseen the catastrophes just around the corner for us all. Vice President Agnew was forced to resign because of criminal charges in 1973. Facing even weightier accusations, Nixon would resign the year after, the only American president ever to do so. The fate of our crew would be decided even sooner.
Although the seeds were irreversibly sown, this was still in our future. As an added honor, the president treated us to a weekend at his private mountain retreat, Camp David. After the grueling years of training, I enjoyed spending family time with Merrill and Alison, while watching Dave and Jim relax with their wives and kids. Mary and Lurton had seen precious little of their husbands in those busy and tense years, and now they could finally enjoy their company in beautiful and luxurious surroundings. I felt a momentary tinge of regret. I was at the pinnacle of my career, but my time around these happy families only reminded me of what I had sacrificed to get this far.
However, it was a time to enjoy, not to reflect. We visited New York for a motorcade through Manhattan with the mayor. We sat in an open-topped car and waved at the crowds, then met with the secretary-general of the United Nations. He presented each of us with the UN Peace Medal.
NASA never trained me in public speaking, but during our postflight itinerary, I grew to enjoy it. I didn’t have any particular axe to grind and just said what was on my mind, which is probably why I wasn’t bothered by giving speeches. I never used a script; I just tried to watch my audience and see what they responded to, changing pace if needed.
While in New York, we did a round of talk shows. The host of the Today Show back then was Hugh Downs, and he had a very funny sideman, the former baseball player Joe Garagiola. During our interview, Joe leaned in and said he understood that astronauts sometimes had differences of opinion in flight, but who had the last word?
Staying lighthearted in keeping with the show’s tone, I raised my hand. Dave shot me a funny look, but Joe laughed and asked me for my answer. I told Joe that the last word was always me saying “Yes, sir!” to Dave. It got a big laugh, and the show continued.
But Dave didn’t forget. In the relative privacy of a limousine on the way to our next engagement, he chewed me out for the entire ride. It wasn’t the only time during that long world tour that Dave and I clashed. He didn’t like me to say things that he hadn’t come up with or vetted. The mission was over, but he was still in charge, and he would make damn sure I remembered it. Jim, miserable, slunk back into his seat during these exchanges and didn’t say a word.
Chicago gives us a wonderful welcome as we parade through the streets.
What could I do? Dave could make life hell for me back in Houston if he wanted. As my commander, people would listen to his opinions about me. So I gritted my teeth and, without letting it suck all the enjoyment out of the trips, tried to do as he ordered.
Fortunately, there was plenty to enjoy. We had a similarly humbling reception in Chicago, where Mayor Daley drove out to meet us at the airport then took us on a tour of the city. Chicago was—and is—very ethnically diverse, and Daley wanted us to visit every neighborhood. It seemed that every different group had their own cultural celebration that day. Now this was my kind of thing. I could party, eat, drink, and outdance them all. It wasn’t really Dave’s scene, but I loved it.
Then we were whisked to a large formal dinner with the mayor. I’d vaguely remembered that Bob Lawrence, the pilot I’d known from astronaut selection testing, was from Chicago. Barbara, his widow, still lived there, so I invited her to the gathering. It was only by chance that Bob had died in a plane crash four years earlier. He could have just as easily have been a NASA astronaut returning from a triumphant trip to the moon and fêted by adoring crowds. I enjoyed a long chat with Barbara that night, sharing my memories of her husband.
I also called Eddie Fisher that day. The popular singer had come by the astronaut office whenever he was in Houston, and we’d become sort of friendly. He invited us to his late show and saved a table for us. By the time we disentangled ourselves from the other celebrations and made it to his theater, we were an hour late for his show. We snuck in, hoping not to disturb a show we assumed was well under way.
But it wasn’t. Eddie had held the show until we arrived, then came over and sang at our table. It was the kind of star treatment we were not used to, and I doubted it would ever feel normal.
NASA provided framed souvenir presentations for us to give away at every stop. Every dignitary from President Nixon on down received a flag that had journeyed with us to the moon and back. Many were specially flown, such as a United Nations flag for the UN. Mayors generally received the flag of their state. NASA didn’t ask, or seem to care, what happened to them after they were presented.
We received the star treatment in every stop we made in America, and then we headed to Western Europe. The people there seemed just as proud of us, which is exactly what we had hoped. We had flown to the moon as Americans, but we explored for the whole world. We hit England, France, Austria, Germany, and Belgium for another dizzying round of meeting world leaders, royalty, and speaking at scientific institutions. It was fun, but my favorite moments were between stops, where in some little village in the middle of Europe, we’d halt for a simple lunch with fascinating company. I always felt in my element in a room full of informal, fun-loving strangers, all eager to show us a good time. Plus, in England, I reconnected with many of my friends from the test pilot school days. It felt wonderful to see them again and share what had happened to me in the last five years.
I was alone, while Dave and Jim had Lurton and Mary with them. Lurton was great company, a very special lady whom I adored. Dave was lucky to have her. And Mary always took care of me. If I were asleep on an airplane on some long flight across the world, Mary would be the one to tuck a blanket around me and make sure I was okay. Lurton and Mary made me feel like family.
At the White House we present President Nixon with a flown item from our mission.
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 surreal: 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.