Free Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman by Neal Thompson Page A

wasn’t like the others he’d dated. She seemed so much more sophisticated than the crabs back at Annapolis.
    His parents picked him up in Boston, and he told them all about Louise Brewer on the car ride north. As soon as he got home, he sat at the desk in his room to write a letter in which he boldly invited her to his Ring Dance in June, a highlight of Naval Academy life. That note would be the first in an effusive, sometimes emotional exchange of letters that would continue between Alan and Louise for the next two years.

    Louise was born, like Alan, in the upstairs bedroom of her parents’ house. Her parents, like Renza Shepard, were devoted Christian Scientists who served as “readers” conducting Sunday services at the church in nearby Wilmington, Delaware.
    Louise’s parents, Russell (called Phil) and Julia, were known as “pensioners” on the DuPont family’s Longwood estate. Pensioners tended the estate’s sprawl of farms and fountains, gardens and greenhouses. In return they received free housing and many other kindnesses from Pierre and Alice DuPont.
    With profits from his family’s growing chemical empire, Pierre S. DuPont bought the undulating farmland in 1906 and transformed it into a tribute to nature and beauty. Modeled after French and Italian gardens he had visited, the estate featured water gardens, reflecting pools, a conservatory, and numerous hydraulic-powered fountains, which Phil Brewer helped design and build. In the conservatory, a colorful, sometimes drunken group of master gardeners from England and Ireland grew oranges, pineapples, espaliered nectarines, cantaloupes, and, in a special greenhouse, orchids.
    Longwood’s hierarchy resembled that of a coal mining town or, in some eyes, a plantation—a self-sustaining community with its own dairy farm and schools, where workers’ families lived entirely beholden to their benefactor, DuPont. But the Brewers had it better than most. As superintendent of maintenance, Phil Brewer was one of five department heads—essentially vice presidents—and grew to become one of DuPont’s closest advisers, as much a friend as an employee. The Brewers lived in the largest of the pensioners’ houses, a large stone manse called the Anvil, which was built especially for them on a secluded corner of the estate. Hundreds of other pensioners, meanwhile, lived down on Red Lion Row, a lane of duplexes built for workers’ families.
    Louise and her sister, Adele, enjoyed a sometimes magical childhood, witnesses on the fringe of a modern mini Versailles. As daughters of a department head—or “VIP girls”—they received special attentions, such as the dresses Mrs. DuPont bought them in Europe. Louise and Adele attended lavish balls in the glass-encased conservatory, where twelve hundred guests watched ballet and fireworks. At one such party, John Philip Sousa’s band performed; at another, nymphs danced in the water garden.
    For Louise, it was a conflicted life—she was both the hired help and the inner circle. She mixed with other pensioners’ children during the day and at night she mingled with dignitaries or royalty at DuPont dinner parties and concerts. A highlight of the year was the Christmas party. Families lined up in the conservatory to receive their annual gift from the DuPonts; the kids usually received one piece of clothing and one toy. But the Brewers didn’t have to line up; they were seated in the balcony of the conservatory when the other families arrived. Each year they received gifts of fine china.
    Phil Brewer was a severe, dough-faced man who worked obsessively long hours on Longwood’s fountains, leaving the girls mostly in the care of their mother, who dressed her two daughters in identical outfits.
    Louise struggled to accommodate what she called her “tomboy streak” and once complained of the difficulties in “being a girl and knowing you can’t do all the things boys do.” Longwood beckoned like a sprawling playground,