Riding Rockets

We all bid our thanks and departed for the office of the vice chief of staff of the air force, General Larry D. Welch. For some reason the chief himself was unavailable but we didn’t care; we were certain the number-two man in the U.S. Air Force would take good care of us. Donna was biting at the bit to get there. The gleam in her eye said it all. She was anticipating the identical “Queen for a Day” treatment she had just seen rendered to Diane. So were we all.

Our first indication that things were to be a little different on the air force side of the Pentagon occurred as we neared the office. No generals awaited us. Instead, a lowly captain rose from his desk, welcomed us, and then said, “Please wait here. I’ll see if the general can see you.” I felt Donna tense at my side. If there was any pomp and circumstance around, it was well hidden. I whispered, “Maybe the party is set up in a different room.”

She replied tersely, “I hope so.” I was beginning to have a very bad feeling.

The captain emerged from the vice chief’s office. “The general is now ready to see you.”

Jesus,I thought,this has more the air of a court-martial than an awards celebration. I could hear Donna’s molars grinding in her rising anger. The rest of our entourage exchanged wondering looks. The contrast to the manner of welcome given Mike and Diane at the CNO’s office could not have been greater.

Our group entered the vice chief’s office and my worst fears were realized. It was just him, General Larry Welch, and his aide. There was no celebratory cake—no celebratory anything. Even the room seemed cheap compared with the CNO’s office.

I presented the general with a framed photo of the launch of STS-41D and tried to inject some levity into what was unfolding as a severe embarrassment for our group. I joked, “General, the only way the space shuttle could look better was if it hadUSAF emblazoned on the wings.”

The general didn’t find the comment the least bit amusing. Instead, he launched into a discussion on the air force budget and how important it was for money to be spent on the development of a new cargo airlifter, not on a new air force–manned space program. I wanted to scream, “It was a joke, general!”

The rest of the ceremony—if it could be called that—was quick. The general pinned the wings on my uniform, shook my hand, and posed for a photo. He made no comment about the fact I was the first nonpilot air force officer ever to fly in space. Then the aide hustled us out of the office so the general could get back to work on those airlifters. I had never been more embarrassed for my service. USN Admiral Truly had seen the debacle. Mike and Diane had seen it all. The NASA officials with us had seen it. The navy treated theirs like royalty; the air force treated Donna and me like an interruption. I wanted to crawl under a rock.

I held Donna’s arm as we walked from the office, and I could feel her trembling in rage. She had received no acknowledgment from General Welch. This was supposed to have been the highlight of my career, and, by proxy, her life. She had put me in that rocket. To do it, she had buried friends, and consoled widows, and kissed her husband off to war, and endured four shuttle countdowns including one engine-start abort. As we exited the office, Donna cursed under her breath. It was a mark of her extreme outrage: I was the foul mouth of the family—Donna never swore. The aide was close enough to hear the word, but I doubted he had any idea as to the reason for the outburst. I knew the general was clueless about how close he had come to feeling the wrath of a woman scorned. His obliviousness reminded me of something an air force pilot had once said in Vietnam, “We’ve all seen tracers coming at us and think that’s the closest we’ve come to death. In reality, some gomer in a rice paddy has probably fired an old single-shot rifle at us and the bullet passed within a foot of our heads and we never knew.” As a combat veteran, I’m sure General Welch had his “I was this close to death” stories, but in reality the closest he ever came to death was by the hands of my wife in his Pentagon office, not in the skies of Vietnam.