The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel

women were alarmed to see a crowd of astronaut groupies waiting in the lobby. Stewardesses with flexible flying schedules, hotel clerks, and diner waitresses seemed to magically appear wherever an astronaut was to be found. Two of these Cape Cookies, as the boys called them, dropped to their knees as the group entered, prostrating themselves before the astronauts. The wives were taken aback at the sheer number of these pretty, tanned young things with their scantily clad bodies, obviously willing to do anything a spaceman desired. Dear God!
    “I mean, these Hollywood types—they need this and they want this,” said Jo, looking around at the rest as if to say, But our guys don’t, right?
    The boys didn’t mind the attention one bit. The MO, as it had always been for a Navy wife worrying about her husband (who might be cozying up to an exotic Asian dancer in a dark tiki bar on the other side of the globe), was to play a cool hand.
    Pretty soon the wives learned the lay of the land at Cocoa Beach. It was chock-full of promoters and public relations men, each trying to get in a word about his product and solicit an astronaut’s endorsement. The party followed the astronauts wherever they went. When the astronauts had first rolled into town, everyone went to the Cape Colony Inn because that’s where the astronauts were. After they packed up and moved the party permanently to the Holiday Inn, everyone followed them there. The hotel bar would be empty, then an astronaut would walk in; within minutes the bar would be full. The bartenders tipped off reporters, who would literally chase the astronaut children down hallways. The kids thought it was funny. The rabid press didn’t get to them the way it got to their mothers, who didn’t like their husbands being walking advertisements for the bald smooth-talking types who offered a variety of perks and bargains while picking up the cookie crumbs left in their wake.
    For the time being, the boys ignored the cookies, instead reminding their wives what a terrific rate the Holiday Inn was giving them. Their rooms cost only a dollar a night, not to mention free all-you-can-eat dinner buffets, which featured shrimp cocktails shaped like rockets. And there was an even better perk: down here in Florida, each astronaut was given a dollar-a-year Corvette.
    Al, Gus, and Gordo befriended Jim Rathmann, who’d won the Indy 500 that year. Jim owned the local Cadillac-Chevrolet dealership in nearby Melbourne, and, under the auspices of doing his patriotic duty, he arranged an out-of-this-world deal with the president of General Motors. An astronaut could “executive drive” a Corvette for a year, then trade it in for a new one the next year. All he had to do was plunk down another dollar. Meanwhile, the wives were doomed to drive station wagons; family rooms on wheels were deemed the perfect vehicle for these all-American mothers. Trudy, who was not only a pilot but liked to race cars, yearned to get behind the wheel of something with a little more horsepower. But the ad men of America told her that a station wagon, with plenty of room for kids and groceries, was more suitable.
    As for Betty, she thought Gus was in a little over his head, always talking about his “friends” at Rathmann’s house. It was a fast crowd, and they all raced cars. Betty didn’t like it a bit. Finally she had a chance to see the place for herself. After dinner in the formal dining room, Betty, who usually didn’t like to cause a fuss, pointed out to Gus, “It’s you they’re after, not me.”
      
    The astronauts weren’t exactly tall, NASA’s requirement being that they all had to be less than five foot eleven—small enough to squeeze into the cramped quarters of a spacecraft. But they were enormously competitive. Anything, no matter how insignificant, might become a test of their manhood. At a mere five foot five, little Gus wanted to prove to the others that he was the most macho of them all. The boys