Free The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel Page A

designers in the world, made her look svelte and glamorous. She was dressed in an elegant midnight blue sheath, her only jewelry a thick gold chain around her neck and a small gold bracelet around her left wrist. She was perfectly regal. Louise thought she and Jackie had a lot in common; both having been raised in aristocratic surroundings on the East Coast, Louise at Longwood Gardens and Jackie summering at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. Even though Louise was only the groundskeeper’s daughter, she always held herself as if she were a Du Pont.
    After the ceremony, Jack led Alan and his fellow astronauts off to the Oval Office to talk about the program, specifically his grand plans for NASA to go to the Moon. Kennedy’s recent failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had been an absolute disaster and international embarrassment for the president, and he was hoping to neutralize it with his ambitious space program.
    “We’re not about to put you guys on a rocket and send you to the Moon,” said Kennedy from his rocking chair. “We’re just thinking about it.”
    Meanwhile, Jackie held court with the women in the formal Green Room. Louise was wearing a beige suit and a white hat with a big starched bow. She was fixated on Jackie, memorizing her every move and mannerism. Jackie, who was hatless , apologized that all the White House kitchen had to offer were crackers because the Kennedys had just gotten back from Hyannis Port. After a bit of small talk, Jackie tucked her arm into Louise’s and led her off for a private tour of the White House.
    After Louise returned to Virginia and back into the fold at Langley, the wives were desperate to hear her report. “What’s Jackie like? You two hit it off, didn’t you? She’s lovely, isn’t she?” They were hoping for some good gossip; they wanted to know what Jackie was really like. Louise acted sisterly, but she was perfectly politic. “She has big feet, just like me,” she said, hinting that Jackie was “bigger-boned” in person. Soon all the wives knew that the First Lady’s dress size was the same as her shoe size, which was a ten.
    What was nice about Louise was even though her every movement and observation was controlled, she really made an effort to be just one of the girls. Louise would come at the drop of a hat to Langley to visit with the girls or meet them at the yacht club at Fort Monroe. She understood her new role as the First Lady of Space, especially when, a calculated twenty days after Alan’s flight, President Kennedy announced to a joint session of Congress his goal of putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. In this speech Kennedy appealed to Americans’ dreams for the future: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth…in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon; if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.”
    He also asked Congress for some Moon money, to the tune of an estimated $40 billion, but no matter: “A great nation was one that undertook great adventures.”
      
    Since becoming an astronaut wife, Betty had developed expensive tastes. It was impossible to find really nice outfits at the dinky department stores near Langley. Gus knew his wife put up with a lot from him, and she never asked questions if he wasn’t around much on the weekends. As a trade-off, he didn’t complain about what she spent. Betty appreciated that.
    “You know,” Gus had told her, “we really have never had any money, but you always know what our limit is. You know what we can do and what we cannot do. I expect you to have clothes when you need them. I do not want you to have to go out and buy something at the last minute.”
    Five-foot Betty had once wanted to take to the skies as a stewardess, but Pan-Am required its hostesses