Chosen by the gods as rocketry’s wunderkind, Wernher von Braun had at least nine lives. In Germany he survived launch-pad explosions, the impact of an incoming test V-2 warhead that hurled him high in the air, hellish bombing raids, imprisonment by Himmler and the Gestapo, and a high-speed wartime car wreck that killed his driver. He lived through a serious hepatitis attack on arrival in America, errant U.S. test missiles, and a near-miss in an aircraft, among other brushes with danger and death. John Bruce Medaris, the U.S. Army general-turned-Anglican priest, observed as von Braun reached age sixty that he must have “an especially effective guardian angel” in view of “the long succession of hazards to life and limb that you have managed to survive without apparent damage.”1
Yet now, barely into his sixties, the seemingly indestructible von Braun was facing an even more formidable hazard: cancer. When his doctor and friend Jim Maxfield discovered suspicious polyps in von Braun’s colon in 1970 and recommended immediate surgery, Braun had put it off.2 “Yes, he knew then that he had a problem, but he didn’t yet realize it was already cancer,” von Braun’s administrative secretary and confidante in Huntsville, Bonnie Holmes, later said. “I think it was probably cancerous at the time he left [MSFC], but he probably did not realize it. If he did know . . . he did not tell us.”3
She recalled that her longtime boss “thought they would go away and not be a problem. He had always been in such good health. Except for his sinus problems and the operation he once had for that, he never had any health problems.” And yet, despite knowing that his beloved mother had died of colon cancer (in 1959) and that there can be a hereditary predisposition for it, Bonnie Holmes noted, “he still took chances with his colon condition,4 which is very unfortunate.”5
He had, however, apparently recovered from having a cancerous kidney removed in 1973. After surgery, radiation sessions, and a brief further convalescence, von Braun went back to work at Fairchild. There he ran into his friend Erik Bergaust, the veteran rocket and space writer, hunting companion, and fellow employee. Von Braun immediately joked that his doctor had told him, “Now that you have only one kidney left, you should drink more . . .” While he purposely let the sentence trail off, Bergaust supplied the missing word: “water.”6
Bergaust asked von Braun what he would do when—and if—he ever retired. “Read,” he had answered. There was never enough time, even for voracious reader von Braun.7
In what turned out to be his last return visit to Rocket City, U.S.A., von Braun accepted an invitation from the City of Huntsville to attend the March 14, 1975, opening ceremonies for the sprawling downtown Von Braun Civic Center. With the dedication of the municipal complex of arts, entertainment, and conference facilities coming only nine days before von Braun’s sixty-third birthday, the Huntsville Times editorially suggested he accept it as an early birthday gift. Said the beaming honoree: “Can you imagine—getting a $15 million art and cultural center for your birthday?!”
Unveiled during the Von Braun Civic Center’s opening was a large oil portrait of von Braun with his head in the starry night heavens and his fundament and feet planted on the rocks of a mountaintop. It hung at the entrance to the concert hall. During brief return business trips to Huntsville the year before, von Braun had sat several times for portraitist C. E. “Ed” Monroe Jr. The Huntsville-born artist and magazine illustrator had lately returned home after a successful career based in New York and Connecticut. During the first sitting, von Braun had told Monroe, a hunting buddy, that he hoped the painter was receiving a handsome commission for the work.
“Wernher,” replied Monroe, “I’m doing this as a gift to the community—for posterity.”
“Ed,” von Braun had jibed, “what has posterity ever done for you?”8
In July 1975 von Braun traveled to Cape Kennedy for the first public meeting of the NSI and the Saturn IB launching for the joint United States-USSR Apollo-Soyuz manned mission in Earth orbit. Once again, old friend Walter Cronkite interviewed him on CBS News. Afterward, dressed in a loud tropical shirt during a visit to the outdoor rocket exhibit at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, von Braun asked a friend, “Will you take my picture in front of the Saturn V?” He paused, then added, “I may not be here again.”9
In addition to his tiring business-related travel for Fairchild, von Braun took his family on a vacation to Canada’s North Bay wilderness in August 1975. There, he experienced rectal bleeding. Typically, he shrugged it off. It reappeared with a vengeance a few weeks later, during a follow-up business visit with Ed Uhl to Alaska. Uhl did not let him ignore the ominous signs this time but “sent him off to the hospital” for surgery as soon as they returned home, Uhl remembered.10
At Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, surgeons discovered an advanced tumor in von Braun’s colon. They removed the malignant growth and a section of the large intestine. Newspaper reports quoted unnamed hospital sources as saying only that the surgery was related to “a kidney ailment.” The private prognosis for the patient’s long-term survival was not good.
Von Braun again returned to work. “His spirit was always up, but his energy slowly decreased,” recalled Uhl. Between hospital stays and rest periods at home, von Braun remained as active as possible at Fairchild as the months slid into 1976. That included speaking out and writing on his favorite subject and making limited public appearances.11
It also meant keeping abreast of the doings back at NASA’s Marshall Center. “You know, he was always interested in what was going on in the center, long after he left,” recalled William R. Lucas, who occupied von Braun’s former post there as director for a record twelve years. “During the final months that he was sick, he had Marshall send him new reports, which we would send in bundles. He would read them in bed.”12
In February 1976 in Washington, von Braun held what turned out to be his final news conference. He pressed once again for a more vigorous national space program. He said space could make “great contributions” to helping “unemployment, balance of trade, increase in food production, protecting the environment, developing health care, energy, world peace.”
Early 1976 also saw a fast-failing von Braun participate in a Fairchild educational film production targeted at young people. He advised them to do their best to prepare for a new age of space. He said that is where the answers lie for the future. “It’s your turn,” he emphasized. That became the film’s title.
In the early months of 1976 von Braun also managed to come to the aid of UAH (the University of Alabama, Huntsville) when the university he had earlier nurtured sought to create a multimillion-dollar solar research institute on its campus. A Washington breakfast meeting with several pivotal U.S. senators was arranged for March 12. “He was pretty sick, but he was there,” recalled longtime aerospace engineer-manager David Christensen, then overseeing the UAH solar research program. “He was moving very slow. This was one of his last hurrahs.” Von Braun found the strength to speak briefly for the proposed institute. Even in his weakened state he was impressive, remembered Christensen. “He closed by saying, ‘Huntsville helped give you the Moon, and I do not see why Huntsville cannot also give you the Sun.’”13
The Solar Research Institute project did not succeed, but not for lack of von Braun’s support.
Christensen recalled another event in early 1976 that involved von Braun. This time the venue was Johns Hopkins University. He gave a lecture on satellites in education, and afterward someone asked about astronauts going to Mars. “I vividly remember him lighting up like a Christmas tree and giving this spiel about how we could have and should have followed through with the plan to go to Mars by 1982,” said Christensen. “The thing that struck me is how, even though ill, he just turned on immediately when he started talking about Mars. He got very dynamic in explaining it all, as nobody else could, because Mars had really been his dream.”14
He gave his last videotaped interview in April, to television’s Hugh Downs at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. He cited an array of current space applications and benefits worldwide and said these were only the beginning.
Also that spring, von Braun attended the NASA headquarters retirement party for colleague William Pickering, the longtime head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “One of the strongest impressions I now have of von Braun is of him at that wingding they put on for me,” Pickering later recalled. “He was very ill. His coming meant a lot to me. It was his last public appearance.”15
Von Braun and his friend and eventual co-biographer, Fred Ordway, continued their collaborative relationship all through 1976. Years later Ordway, having checked the journal he has dutifully kept daily since boyhood, cited the day in January of that year that the two spent together. He had arranged for von Braun and several Fairchild colleagues to visit the new Energy Research and Development Administration in Washington, where Ordway worked. The afternoon visit ended with von Braun turning to him with a reminder of a National Space Institute reception the two needed to attend that evening and suggesting they afterward share a quiet dinner out. “So, please call Maria and tell her I’ll be late,” von Braun had added.
“He was afraid she’d put her foot down, scold him, and tell him to get right home,” recalled Ordway, who had “been through that routine before” with the couple. “Anyway, she answered the phone and I said, ‘Hi, Maria. This is Fred Ordway—,’ but before I could say anything more, she interrupted, ‘Yes, I know, Wernher’s going to be late. And he made you call me.’”16
The wise spouse’s objections notwithstanding, the two men stayed in the city and had their quiet dinner. Von Braun’s mind was still sharp, Ordway remembered. “He was very keen on geography, and we tested each other’s knowledge that evening,” as they had on earlier occasions. Two months later, on March 23, 1976, Ordway, von Braun, and a mutual friend from Germany celebrated the rocket pioneer’s sixty-fourth birthday with lunch at a Washington restaurant. Ordway quoted from his journal: “He was quite subdued that day, clearly suffering from his battle with cancer. It was sad to watch him walk hesitantly in and out of the restaurant with the aid of a cane. Since our January dinner, he had clearly gone downhill.”17
As the cancer spread, the now-silver-haired von Braun began spending more and more time in Alexandria Hospital, especially after May 1976. Maria was at his side, and their three children were frequent visitors. His oldest and closest associates, men such as Eberhard Rees and Ernst Stuhlinger, visited from Huntsville. Relatively newer friends, too, such as Neil Armstrong and Hugh Downs, came by.
“I visited him whenever I could,” Uhl recalled. “Between visits I’d collect papers, reports, and documents, and we’d talk about all that was happening with space and the company. One day, he looked very weak but his spirit was good. He had his usual twinkle in his eye. I said, ‘Wernher, how’re you doing?’ He said, ‘Well, Ed, I’ve had so many blood transfusions I can say truly that I’m a full-blooded American.’” The two men enjoyed a quiet laugh over that. Then Uhl gave von Braun the reading material he’d brought, and they chatted awhile. The visitor soon noticed the patient was tiring.
“Wernher, I’d better go,” said Uhl. “Your doctor has me on a short leash.”
Von Braun reached under his bed and pulled out a long object. “Before I go,” he said, “I want you to have my rifle.”
“Wernher,” replied a moved Uhl, accepting the firearm, “thank you very much. I’ll clean it for you, I’ll oil it for you, and I’ll keep it for you—for our next trip.”18
There were no dry eyes between the two friends as Ed Uhl left the room.
Writing was something von Braun could continue doing even as his physical condition and pain worsened throughout 1976. Sometimes he had to work almost in secret, though. He and Ordway were collaborating on a new book about solar-system discoveries. From his hospital bed von Braun insisted on reviewing drafts of chapters and adding material. He called Ordway from the hospital on July 28. “His voice sounded extremely weak,” the historian wrote in his journal. Von Braun was somehow making progress on their chapter on Jupiter. “We talked for at least twenty minutes,” remembered Ordway. “He reminded me once again that if he suddenly hung up, it meant that either the nurse or Maria had arrived. He wasn’t supposed to be working and didn’t want to get scolded!”19
The collaborators spoke by phone about their book-in-progress up until mid-January 1977, when von Braun was unable to work on it any further.20
“Almost a confessional,” a colleague described von Braun’s last major piece of solo writing. Sometime in 1976 he accepted the invitation of the Lutheran Church of America to present a major paper at its synod at the University of Pennsylvania that autumn. He worked on his eighty-two-page paper for several months in the hospital. He titled it “Responsible Scientific Investigation and Application.” When the time came for its presentation, he was too ill to appear. He had a surrogate step in and read it for him to the large assembly; other speakers there included Jonas Salk, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Archibald Cox, James Baldwin, and Norman Cousins.21
The highly personal essay, a blend of the philosophical and the practical, covered an array of “the grim problems besetting humanity” and von Braun’s thoughts on remedies. The subject areas ranged across science and technology, morality and taboos, the motivation for scientific study, a prioritization of scientific research needs, environmental pollution, the relationship between religion and science, and human survival.
He addressed everything from the issue of scientific ethics and controls, in what later became a brave new world of genetic tinkering, to the infinite beneficial uses of Earth-orbiting data gatherers. “Such information from satellites,” he wrote, “has been called as epoch-making as the first use of fire as a tool, or the first practical use of the wheel.” The surface had only been scratched in the use of satellites to help educate the illiterate billions on Earth, he stressed. He termed the human brain “man’s most precious resource” and deplored the fact that “the vast majority of mankind uses it most sparingly. The reason is inadequate education.”
As for the true impetus for space travel and exploration, the rocket pioneer stated he was convinced that “the answer lies rooted not in whimsy but in the nature of man. I guess it is all just in the basic makeup of man as God wanted him to be. I happen to be convinced that man’s newly acquired capability to travel through outer space provides us with a way out of our evolutionary dead alley.”
His summing-up before the Lutheran gathering also reflected his tightening embrace of his own Christian faith as he faced death. He revisited what had become his familiar rationale that science and religion are fully compatible. “In this reaching of the new millennium through faith in the words of Jesus Christ, science can be a valuable tool rather than an impediment. The universe revealed through scientific inquiry is the living witness that God has indeed been at work. Understanding the nature of the creation provides a substantive basis for the faith by which we attempt to know the nature of the Creator.”22
Decades of shared reflections by the rocket scientist such as those expressed in his deathbed essay led author Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, to declare repeatedly in later years, “Wernher von Braun was the only philosopher NASA ever really had.” When Wolfe appeared on NBC News’ top-rated Today show in the fall of 1998 to discuss his new novel, A Man in Full, and John Glenn’s recent return to space, he did so but then hastened to bring up von Braun:
He was a member of the German Wehrmacht, and he had a Teutonic accent—had everything but a dueling scar on his cheek—and so they couldn’t bring him forward as “NASA’s philosopher.” But he was the philosopher, and he said, “The importance of the space program is not surpassing the Soviets in space. The importance is to build a bridge to the stars, so that when the Sun dies, humanity will not die. The Sun is a star that’s burning up, and when it finally burns up, there will be no Earth ... no Mars ... no Jupiter.” And he said, “You have to find a way, because humans are the only thinking creatures that we know of in the entire universe, and we have to build a bridge to save this particular species.” I think that’s a grand thought, and it should be the thought that everybody has in supporting the space program.23
On January 1, 1977, the hopelessly ill rocket pioneer resigned from Fairchild Industries. Later that month outgoing President Gerald Ford awarded him the National Medal of Science. Having been bedridden in the hospital for months at that point in time, he was much too sick to receive it publicly, so Ford asked Uhl to make a private presentation. “Several weeks went by before I could get the doctors to agree,” Uhl recalled. “One day Maria called me. She met me outside his room. She prepared me for his appearance.”24 When they entered the room, the visitor was glad she had.
“He looked like a skeleton, with only skin draped over his bones,” Uhl remembered. “Here was this big, robust guy, whittled down to a pitiful thing.”25 Uhl continued:
I said, “Wernher, President Ford has awarded you the National Medal of Science, and as you know, that is the highest honor our country can give a scientist.” He turned to Maria, tears in his eyes, and said, “Isn’t this a great country? I came here with all that I owned in a cardboard box, somewhere between a former enemy and not yet a citizen, and we were given all the opportunities of citizenship. This country has treated me so well. And now the president is giving me this high honor.”26
Uhl prepared to leave, but von Braun asked him to stay. The visit continued for two hours. Uhl had known von Braun for more than thirty years, and he had grown to admire him enormously: “He never looked at rockets really as a weapon, but as a means to reach and explore space.” This was the last time he saw his friend alive.27
Many of von Braun’s friends and colleagues over the years had assumed the vigorous, jut-jawed space evangelist would live forever. Arthur C. Clarke was one of them. In a happy-sixtieth-birthday letter, the British author had noted that in 1958 he had written a short story set in 2001, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting.” In it, a Russian spacecraft designer remarks that he hadn’t seen von Braun “since that symposium we arranged in Astrograd on his eightieth birthday, the last time he came down from the Moon.” Added Clarke in the letter to his friend: “That would be a very nice self-fulfilling prophecy. So—see you in Astrograd in ’92, and [at] Clavius Base for your centennial [in 2012].”28
In the same vein, rocket team member Walter Wiesman—who considered his leader “the closest to the ‘Man for All Seasons’ in this slightly imperfect world”—had closed his sixtieth birthday greetings to von Braun with: “I have no doubt you will make 90 without too much effort. Just remember, please, it ain’t necessarily clean living that will get you there. But what am I telling you? I heard that . . . from you years ago!”29
As von Braun faced the inevitable, he grew to cherish even more his family, close friends, and the time remaining to him. Ever the loquacious one, he also grew reflective about his life and work, acknowledging his satisfaction with living to see many of his dreams come true. But there were doubts, too. Near the end he had sought reassurance from several old and dear colleagues that he, and they, had done the right thing in developing lethal missiles, because expediting the space age was always their one true goal, was it not? He was given their reassurances, said Stuhlinger.30
Von Braun had chosen not to write his memoirs or a full-blown autobiography. He was always too busy. Furthermore, as he had said in rejecting several close associates’ urgings that he do so, he would inevitably leave out individuals who could rightly expect to be included, according to Stuhlinger and others. Perhaps he had other reasons as well. In any case, he would leave to others the telling of his journey through time . . . and space.
Von Braun spent the final weeks of his life in the hospital “in seclusion and silence,” with “his last credo” being “Thy will be done,” his favorite passage from the Lord’s Prayer.31
Years earlier, the irrepressibly curious von Braun had given the following as his favorite quotation by an American: “If I should reach my last moments with perfect lucidity, I feel sure that I would enter eternity with my eyes wide open and a feeling of intense curiosity.”32 It was not to be. In mid-June 1977 his two-year ordeal of ever-failing health ended. His body—and formidable brain—ravaged by a wicked disease that science had not yet conquered, this man of science and technology died quietly in the morning hours of Thursday, June 16. The pied piper of space, a resident of planet Earth for sixty-five years and three months, had piped his last beguiling tune.
Time always had been so precious a commodity to Wernher von Braun that he strove not to waste a moment. One of his favorite quotations was from Thoreau: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!” “Time,” von Braun once observed, “puts a limit on us all. We can overcome all other dimensions, but in turn, we are overcome by time.”33
Before the day was over—and purposely before word of his death spread—he was buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery, in a churchyard in Alexandria. Present were his family and a few friends. No news reporters, photographers, or television cameras; no admiring fans—and no potential troublemakers. His simple headstone was engraved:
WERNHER VON BRAUN, 1912-1977
Psalms: 19:1
The Old Testament citation in stone was of his longtime favorite scriptural passage, a soaring Psalm of David: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.”