Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman by Neal Thompson Page A
Authors: Neal Thompson
Tags: United States, History, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, Biography, Science & Technology, Astronauts, Astronautics
Ads: Link
Bart and Alan over West Point—suggested Alan consider the U.S. Naval Academy. Alan immediately saw the perfection of his uncle’s suggestion. In the Navy he could indulge both his love of the water and, more importantly, his love of the air.
The decision to allow his son to pursue the Navy instead of the Army must have weighed heavily on Bart. Yet at some point he realized: Maybe he would not have a colonel for a son, and a long-established tradition of Shepard men as Army officers would cease, but then again, maybe he would someday have an admiral for a son.
In 1940 Alan notched the second-highest score in New Hampshire on the Naval Academy’s preliminary exam. But because he had skipped
two
elementary-school grades, the family learned that, at sixteen, Alan was too young for the academy. Rather than alter their course, they sent Alan for a year to Admiral Farragut Academy, a military prep school in New Jersey. Bart wasn’t taking any chances. He wrote to Farragut’s superintendent: “Appreciate you putting more pressure on him to study.”
After a year at Farragut, Shepard was ordered to report to Annapolis.
When he arrived there, on June 19, 1941, he was again among the smallest in the class. And at seventeen he was again one of the youngest. Though he had been something of a self-sufficient loner in East Derry, he had also been surrounded by family and friends and was never truly alone. Now, as he found himself suddenly thrown in among bigger and older young men, Shepard embarked on a difficult transformation from gangly teen to naval officer—a transformation that, from the start, he seemed almost intent on sabotaging.
2
“I think I love you”
Teams of uniformed, rock-faced upperclassmen ushered Shepard into his new world, a regimented and hierarchical military domain for which he was ill-prepared.
The U.S. Navy had first attempted to create a training academy in 1842 aboard a Brooklyn-based training ship, the American Brig
Somers.
But during the inaugural cruise a student and two enlisted sailors rebelled against their strict captain, were found guilty of mutiny, and were hanged. The Navy decided to replace its floating school with a land-based one, which it built beside the remote fishing village of Annapolis, Maryland, where students—called midshipmen—would be taught far from the distractions of city life.
From the start, in 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was an institution where no rebellion or insubordination would be tolerated. Its founders never again resorted to hanging, but the plan—“to develop midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically,” the founders said—was, bluntly put, to create hardened officers by first breaking their will.
The Naval Academy’s spectacular, ivy-covered gray granite buildings, most of them built in the sturdy but elegant French Renaissance style, occupied a picturesque stretch of waterfront along the Severn River, which flowed into nearby Chesapeake Bay. Separated from Annapolis by a ten-foot stone wall, the grounds were known as the Yard. The academy looked like a pastoral Ivy League college campus except for the occasional military cannon or war hero’s statue. Beneath a copper-domed chapel lay the body of John Paul Jones, and midshipmen quickly learned the words to an irreverent song about how Jones “lies around all day, body pickled in alcohol.”
More than three thousand midshipmen lived in one of the world’s largest dormitories—Bancroft Hall, known as “Mother B.” When Shepard arrived, construction crews were adding yet another wing to the imposing granite building, which would soon house five miles of hallways and nearly two thousand rooms—so big that Bancroft Hall would eventually earn its own zip code.
In a tradition of antagonistic first-day routines honed across the school’s first century, upperclassmen subjected the incoming class to a torrent of insults, screams, put-downs, and various other forms of physical and emotional abuse.
The decision to allow his son to pursue the Navy instead of the Army must have weighed heavily on Bart. Yet at some point he realized: Maybe he would not have a colonel for a son, and a long-established tradition of Shepard men as Army officers would cease, but then again, maybe he would someday have an admiral for a son.
In 1940 Alan notched the second-highest score in New Hampshire on the Naval Academy’s preliminary exam. But because he had skipped
two
elementary-school grades, the family learned that, at sixteen, Alan was too young for the academy. Rather than alter their course, they sent Alan for a year to Admiral Farragut Academy, a military prep school in New Jersey. Bart wasn’t taking any chances. He wrote to Farragut’s superintendent: “Appreciate you putting more pressure on him to study.”
After a year at Farragut, Shepard was ordered to report to Annapolis.
When he arrived there, on June 19, 1941, he was again among the smallest in the class. And at seventeen he was again one of the youngest. Though he had been something of a self-sufficient loner in East Derry, he had also been surrounded by family and friends and was never truly alone. Now, as he found himself suddenly thrown in among bigger and older young men, Shepard embarked on a difficult transformation from gangly teen to naval officer—a transformation that, from the start, he seemed almost intent on sabotaging.
2
“I think I love you”
Teams of uniformed, rock-faced upperclassmen ushered Shepard into his new world, a regimented and hierarchical military domain for which he was ill-prepared.
The U.S. Navy had first attempted to create a training academy in 1842 aboard a Brooklyn-based training ship, the American Brig
Somers.
But during the inaugural cruise a student and two enlisted sailors rebelled against their strict captain, were found guilty of mutiny, and were hanged. The Navy decided to replace its floating school with a land-based one, which it built beside the remote fishing village of Annapolis, Maryland, where students—called midshipmen—would be taught far from the distractions of city life.
From the start, in 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was an institution where no rebellion or insubordination would be tolerated. Its founders never again resorted to hanging, but the plan—“to develop midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically,” the founders said—was, bluntly put, to create hardened officers by first breaking their will.
The Naval Academy’s spectacular, ivy-covered gray granite buildings, most of them built in the sturdy but elegant French Renaissance style, occupied a picturesque stretch of waterfront along the Severn River, which flowed into nearby Chesapeake Bay. Separated from Annapolis by a ten-foot stone wall, the grounds were known as the Yard. The academy looked like a pastoral Ivy League college campus except for the occasional military cannon or war hero’s statue. Beneath a copper-domed chapel lay the body of John Paul Jones, and midshipmen quickly learned the words to an irreverent song about how Jones “lies around all day, body pickled in alcohol.”
More than three thousand midshipmen lived in one of the world’s largest dormitories—Bancroft Hall, known as “Mother B.” When Shepard arrived, construction crews were adding yet another wing to the imposing granite building, which would soon house five miles of hallways and nearly two thousand rooms—so big that Bancroft Hall would eventually earn its own zip code.
In a tradition of antagonistic first-day routines honed across the school’s first century, upperclassmen subjected the incoming class to a torrent of insults, screams, put-downs, and various other forms of physical and emotional abuse.
Similar Books
