Riding Rockets

As I recounted for Donna the incredible experience of spaceflight and expressed my intention to do it all over again, I was sure she was disappointed. I was sure she would have much preferred a “rest of our lives” scenario that had me returning to the air force for a staff position somewhere in space command that might lead to a star on my shoulders. I was sure her preferred scenario did not include the selection of another potential escort into widowhood, another good-bye walk on the beach house sands, and another T-9 minute vigil on the roof of the LCC. But she would have died before she would have ever put her feelings first—it was the Catholic in her. In her high school marriage course lesson plan is this statement: “The happiness of the woman is found in dependence on her husband. She’s happiest when she is making others happy. Selfishness is the greatest curse to a woman’s nature.” Through her childhood the nuns had browbeaten her to believe that her feelings didn’t count, that her lot was to mourn and weep in the “vale of tears” called life. Personal happiness? Fuhgeddaboutit. Her existence was to be one of sacrifice; sacrifice for her husband and sacrifice for her children. Her reward would come in the next life. No, Donna would never ask me to leave NASA. Her Catholicism had given me a free pass to pursue my own fulfillment.

Before we had even gotten our Earth legs back the Zoo Crew was in the JSC photo lab editing our mission videos and compiling a movie to take on the road to show the world. No longer would I have to interpret what others had done before me. I had loathed that ritual—going to the luncheons of America and prefacing my comments with, “I haven’t flown in space yet, but those who have say…” It was like a minor league baseball player getting onstage and saying, “I’ve never played in theShow, but those who have say….” Now I had my own space story and movie to support it.

In the rented ballroom of a local country club, a few weeks after our landing, Mike, Judy, Steve, and I climbed onstage to accept the coin of the realm from Hank—a gold astronaut pin. None of us cared that we had previously handed over a check for $400 to pay for the pins.

We began our postflight appearances. One of my first was to Albuquerque, where I was given the keys to the city. My flight had not conferred any celebrity. There were no cheering throngs at city hall, just the mayor’s staff, my mom and dad, and a handful of other family and friends. But at least I was introduced by my own name. I had attended an earlier event where Steve Hawley had been introduced by the NASA administrator as “Sally Ride’s husband.” Talk about living in a cold shadow. Hawley’s marriage to Sally had put him on the far side of the moon. When officials in his hometown of Salina, Kansas, told Steve they were putting a sign on a nearby highway proclaiming his astronaut status, Steve had joked with us, “It’ll probably say, ‘Hometown-in-law of Sally Ride.’” Judy, too, had to walk in Sally’s shadow. At several appearances she was referred to as Sally Ride. So I was happy to be “Mike Mullane” at my Albuquerque homecoming instead of “an astronaut who flew in space with the husband of Sally Ride.”

It was a few hours after the Albuquerque ceremony that my grandmother, who had flown from her Texas home to participate in the festivities, died quietly while napping at my parents’ house. Margaret Pettigrew had been born on a Minnesota farm in 1897, six years before the Wright brothers had flown an airplane. In her early childhood, the horse had been the primary mode of transportation. At age eighty-seven she had stood on a Florida beach and watched her grandson ride a rocket into space. Incredible.

Accompanied by our wives, NASA flew us to Washington, D.C., for a glad-handing event with members of Congress. Our crew assembled in a reception line while congressmen and senators passed by, shaking our hands and offering their congratulations. I wondered if Ted Kennedy would appear. If he did, I was certain Hank would blow a brain vein, but the senator from Massachusetts was a no-show.