Quick: What’s the first thing you think of when you read “astronaut’s wife”?
If you think “Stepford Wife,” you are in agreement with about 99.9 percent of the world. The other tenth of 1 percent would instead say, “divorced, over-worked, funny, stressed out.”
That one-tenth actually are the only ones who really know. Because they are, yes, astronauts’ wives — the very ones who were on constant display during the 1960s when being an Apollo astronaut was better than being Jimi or Elvis. And on tonight’s startling BBC America special “Apollo Wives,” they tell you what it was like.
The 10 ex-and former astronauts’ wives allowed their annual reunion in Houston to be filmed earlier this year.
While the women say that being the wife of a high flyer was at times exhilarating, for the most part, it was no walk on the lunar surface. The husbandsgot to orbit the moon, but the world expected the wives to orbit them.
Of the 10 who attend the reunion each year, seven had marriages end in divorce — usually due to cheating on their husbands’ parts. Interesting especially because, back then, all of these wives looked like Jackie clones with large, perfect ‘dos, slim frames, three or four perfect tow-headed children and handsome, hero hubbies — all of whom were doing what JFK was doing after work hours.
The astronaut exes and former wives include Janet Armstrong (ex of Neil), Clare Schweikart Whitfield, Harriet Eisele (first wife to be divorced), Barbara Gordon, Jane (Conrad) Dreyfus, Martha Chaffee, Lurton Scott, Barbara (Cernan) Butler, Beth Williams and Jan Evans.
Martha Chaffee, whose husband Roger was inside Apollo One when the oxygen-filled compartment exploded, burning him alive along with Gus Grissom and Ed White, wasn’t told about the accident immediately.
In fact, NASA called the other wives first to tell them to drop by the homes of the unsuspecting widows (they lived within blocks of each other in Houston) but keep their mouths shut and act like everything was great — until the NASA officials arrived to break the devastating news.
Chaffee, who had two small children at the time, says she was compensated with his $2,000 military insurance. Yes, $2,000. Period. For a man who was going to fly to the moon!
“They did pay our expenses to and from the funeral in Florida, though,” she adds.
As the women — now in their spry 70s — kick back, drink some good wine and laugh like crazy, we learn what really went on behind the photo ops.
To paraphrase the maxim about war, their lives were 99 percent tedium interrupted by 1 percent pure terror.
And, by the way, you’ll never think of these babes as Stepford anythings ever again.