Riding Rockets

At another military formal dinner, Rhea Seddon and I were cospeakers. In my comments I used the wordgirls in reference to the female astronauts. I had done so without malice. It was just as natural as breathing for me to refer to the women asgirls orgals. Afterward, a wife from the audience approached me with a smile that would have chilled Hannibal Lecter. She asked, “Do they call you aboy astronaut?” I was baffled by the comment…but not for long. She enlightened me while tearing me a new fundamental orifice. “How dare you refer to Dr. Seddon as a girl! Where is your PhD? Are you a surgeon? She has better credentials than you.” She stormed off. It was one of my earliest lessons in political correctness.

Besides contracting with Miss Manners, Toastmasters, and NOW for remedial training, NASA should have also reviewed with its astronauts the various songs they might be asked to sing during a public appearance. Many of the requests for astronaut speakers came from organizations planning patriotic-themed events. Nothing was bound to excite more pride in the American soul than a trim, square-jawed, shorthaired, steely-eyed war-veteran astronaut poised next to Old Glory leading the audience in the singing of a patriotic song. Every Rotary Club, VFA, and Elks Club in America wanted that Norman Rockwell scene on their stage. But that assumed the astronaut knew the song in question.

At one of my appearances I was blindsided by a request to lead the audience in the singing of “America the Beautiful.” I was prepared for my speech. I had it on my notecards. What I didn’t have on my cards was “America the Beautiful.” As the master of ceremonies beckoned me to the podium I could feel my bowels liquefying. I held on to his handshake just to keep from collapsing. My brain was logjammed with every patriotic lyric I had ever heard:for-purple-mountains-majesty-our-flag-was-still-

there-the-caissons-go-rolling-along. Retrieving “America the Beautiful” from that mess was going to take a miracle.

The MC handed me the microphone. I wished it had been a gun so I could have blown out my scrambled brains. They were all looking at me, hands on hearts. Hundreds of them. Only a lone cough disturbed the silence.It doesn’t get any worse than this, I thought. But I was wrong. As a courtesy to a group of hearing impaired who were sitting in the front row, there was a signer at the edge of the stage staring right at my lips. Her hands were poised to record my every utterance. How I didn’t wet myself (or worse), I’ll never know.

I placed my hand on my heart and turned to face the flag. I could feel my pulse through my suit pocket. The MC punched “play” on a boom box and the first strains of the melody flowed into the room. I sang the only words I was absolutely certain of, “Oh beautiful…”

Those words proved enough. Everybody joined in and my voice was lost. Actually, I lowered the microphone from my mouth so my incoherent babbling couldn’t be heard. I had pulled it off. Or so I thought. Then, the signer caught my eye. She was focused on my mumbling lips with the precision of a laser. Not a syllable was getting by her. If I could have read sign language, I knew what those flying fingers would have been saying. “Hey, everybody! This guy is a fraud. He doesn’t know ‘America the Beautiful.’”

I wasn’t the only astronaut to be surprised on the way to a stage. Hoot Gibson once served as a last-minute replacement speaker for Judy Resnik at a women’s event. The MC began the introduction by reading Judy’s entire biography. Hoot was dumbstruck. Judy wasn’t there. Everybody in the audience knew he was to be the substitute speaker, yet the MC droned on with Judy’s bio as if she were going to step out of the wings to give the program. Only after it was completely rendered did Hoot realize the MC’s purpose in reading it. It was to establish Judy’s irreplaceable importance to NASA. The MC went on with Hoot’s introduction in words that loosely translated, “Judy is so important to NASA there was no way she could be spared to come to speak at today’s event. But NASA could easily do without this useless dirt bag of a man so they sent him. We’ll just have to be disappointed and listen to his forgettable comments.” Then, after Hoot’s speech, the MC presented him with a plaque inscribed to Judy.

As my NASA career continued, I discovered new land mines to step on while in front of the public. In the Q&A that followed one of my speeches, a woman asked, “Have you seen any aliens?”