Riding Rockets

I didn’t struggle with my emotions when Young was removed, but, with Abbey, it was different. Abbey had raised me from the huddled masses to be an astronaut. He had picked me to fly on two space shuttle missions. Besides my own father, no other man had influenced my life as much as George Abbey. And any unbiased outsider would say he had treated me fairly. He had selected me to fly my first mission before seven other TFNG MSes got their rookie rides. He had selected me to fly my second mission before eight of my peers got their chance at a second mission. With STS-27 I was assigned to an important flight with a robot arm task. Yes, I was definitely conflicted about Abbey’s bureaucratic demise. I was disturbed enough to wonder if it had really beenmy problem all along. Maybe a tougher man could have accommodated Abbey’s Machiavellian managerial style. But deep down I knew that wasn’t the case. McGuire had said I wasn’t the only astronaut to have come to him, and given the time it would have taken him to acquire the data and write his astronaut leadership document, he must have been talking to astronauts who had “lost it” long before I did. Even as I questioned my emotional mettle as the source of my Abbey problem, other astronauts were celebrating. One commented, “If we had any lamp shades in our offices we’d be running up and down the halls with them on our heads.” Another celebrant was heard in the hallway singing, “The wicked witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead.” Still another bitterly offered, “I hope one day to see Abbey working as a grease monkey on the flight line at the Amarillo airport. It’s all he’s good for.” I doubted there were any astronauts, even those who had benefited most from his largess, who were sorry to see Abbey go.

No, the problem wasn’t mine. But, still, I didn’t like the way I felt. I had wanted to love this man unconditionally. Like Donna, he had been integral to my dream fulfillment. If somebody else had been leading astronaut interviews in October 1977, would I have made the cut? I doubted it. Just as a different wife would have meant a different life, I suspect a different chief of FCOD would have had a different criterion for astronaut selection, most likely one I wouldn’t have met. I had wanted to render Abbey a lifetime of fealty. At our welcome to JSC in 1978 there had been no more loyal TFNG on that stage. But over the years, his Stalinist-like secrecy, his indifference to the fear that dominated the astronaut office, his unfairness to the air force pilots, his gross inequities in flight assignments, and his abysmal lack of communication had drained my allegiance completely.

As the office celebration continued, one astronaut commented, “Until someone drives a wooden stake through his heart, I won’t believe he’s really gone.” The comment proved prophetic. Abbey’s JSC days weren’t over by a long shot. He used his time at HQ to ally himself with Dan Goldin, who, in 1992, would become NASA administrator. In 1996 Goldin appointed George director of Johnson Space Center, arguably the most powerful position within NASA. Ultimately, George got it all, proving what every TFNG had believed for so many years, that Abbey was unsurpassed in his ability to manipulate a byzantine organization like NASA’s. It was a talent the CIA could have employed. If, during the darkest days of the Cold War, they had parachuted Abbey into Moscow’s Red Square, naked, not knowing a word of Russian, and without a single kopeck in his hand, George still would have become a member of the Politburo within a year and Soviet premier within two. We could have ended the Cold War decades earlier.