Riding Rockets

CHAPTER 31 God Falls

We were the last crew ever to receive news of our mission assignment from George Abbey. On October 30, 1987, George was reassigned to NASA HQ in Washington, D.C., to assume the job of deputy associate administrator for spaceflight. Hoot would later tell me Abbey had hinted he didn’t want the “promotion.” That was easy to believe. For ten years George had wielded enormous power at JSC and now it was being taken from him. His loftier-sounding HQ title came with about as much power as one of those twenty or so vice president positions on the staff of a local bank. Every astronaut was of the opinion that this had been an assassination. But by whom? Many astronauts suspected Admiral Dick Truly. Dick was now the number-two man at NASA HQ and being groomed for the NASA administrator position (which he would assume in 1989). As a former astronaut, he certainly knew of George’s leadership style, so he had motive. I wasn’t about to ask Dr. McGuire if he had a hand in it. I doubted he would have told me and, besides, I didn’t want any further association with the matter. It was the kind of office intrigue that could only hurt a career.

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.

On December 5, 1987, the astronaut office held a going-away party for Abbey at Pete’s Cajun BBQ. It was billed “George Abbey Appreciation Night.” About a third of the office were no-shows. Two astronauts told me they were boycotting the event. I suspected some of the other absentees were of a mind that they would rather fly a night TAL into Timbuktu than show any appreciation for George. I attended merely to celebrate the fact he was gone from our lives. There would be no weepy singing of “Auld Lang Syne” at this party. Mark Lee, class of 1984, was the MC and did a terrific job, donning a buzz-cut wig to mimic Abbey. It was obvious Mark was of the opinion that George was forever powerless over astronauts, because his humor was “I’ll-never-see-this-man-again” acidic. He made reference to Abbey’s preferential treatment of the navy astronauts, of Dick Truly’s suspected role in removing him from the FCOD position (Dick Truly and the new JSC director, Aaron Cohen, were both noticeably absent from the event), and of George’s tendency to suffer episodes of narcolepsy when he didn’t want to hear an opinion contrary to his. Then, to everybody’s astonishment, Mark took off his wig and grew sentimental. “You can’t have a boss for so many years and not be choked up about his departure.” I couldn’t believe it. Others around me held similarly incredulous looks. Choked up about George’s departure? Only if one of Pete’s Cajun rib bones got caught in my throat. But Mark continued his endearing comments, glibly flowing to a conclusion, “And for those of you who might be feeling a lump in the throat and getting all misty-eyed thinking about George leaving…just remember what an asshole he can be!” Mark had flown well beyond the edge of the envelope. Everybody cheered and applauded. Abbey smirked. What was behind that smirk? I wondered. It could have been anything from I’m proud of these guys to I’ll get even with these traitorous dickheads if it’s the last thing I ever do.

Abbey was dead to me. The other significant man in my life, my father, would die unexpectedly in his sleep a few months later—February 10, 1988. He was sixty-six. He had lived exactly half his life with legs and half without. Only in the dim recesses of my mind, far back to my eighth and ninth years of life, could I see him standing next to me on rock-solid legs showing me how to turn into a fastball and lay down a bunt. Those memories were all but obliterated by the thirty-three years of images from his post-polio life. In those, I always see him in his wheelchair, as if the device were an organ of his living body. And in those scenes I see a man who stood taller than most of us will ever do on two good legs. My dad was my hero.

I chose to drive the eight hundred miles to Albuquerque for his funeral so I would have some quiet time for reflection before being plunged into the administrative details of his death. Two of my brothers lived in Albuquerque so my mom had plenty of help to deal with the situation, though I knew she wouldn’t need it. Grief didn’t stand a chance with my mom. Two days later, when I entered the house, she pulled me aside and said, “Mike, I loved your dad very much, but you won’t see me cry. It’s not in a Pettigrew to cry.” And she didn’t.

Like many children who experience the sudden loss of a father, I regretted all the things I hadn’t said while he had been alive to hear them. I wished I had told him how much it had meant to me that he had stayed in our kid-games even after polio. My brothers and I would carry him to the mound and he would be our permanent pitcher in games of baseball. He would referee our driveway basketball games. He would play water polo with us, his shrunken legs trailing in his wake like two ribbons of flesh.

He had endowed me with an easy and spontaneous sense of humor and I wanted him back to hear me say, “Thanks, Dad.” I could recall him sitting in his wheelchair, fully clothed, smoking his pipe and deciding it would be fun to go swimming. He bellowed, “Banzai,” and raced his wheelchair straight into the pool. It sank to the bottom, where he sat for several seconds with his pipe still clamped in his teeth. My brothers and I laughed at his underwater pose. We begged him to do it again and, after hauling him and the wheelchair from the water, he did.

I wished for a chance to tell of the thrill I felt watching my rubber band–powered gliders soaring across the desert. Dad had shown me how to build them and I could still see his hands, made huge and calloused from the use of his crutches and wheelchair, guiding mine in the sanding of the balsa-wood propeller spinner.

I wanted him back to tell how much it had mattered that he had kept me home from school to watch Alan Shepard ride his candle into space. I wanted to tell him thanks for driving me to Kirtland AFB, where I watched the weather officer launch his radiosondes. Dad would then hurry me home so I could follow the helium balloon with my Sears telescope. I would hope against hope the instrument package hanging beneath it would parachute into my yard. Just the thought of touching something that had been in the stratosphere would turbo-boost my heart.

I remembered him buying me my first rocket—a plastic device powered by vinegar and baking soda. And then there were his gifts of Tinkertoys, chemistry sets, Erector Sets, a Heathkit crystal radio, and my Conquest of Space book. I ached to tell him how all of those had empowered my dream.

Dad’s death unleashed long-dormant memories of the minutiae of my childhood. By itself each memory seemed inconsequential but connected together they revealed my pathway into space. George Abbey may have selected me as an astronaut but my dad made me one.

Dressed in military uniform, with his medals and wings on his chest, Dad was laid to rest in the Veterans Cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A rifle salute was fired and the honor guard lifted the American flag from the casket, folded it, and presented it to my mother. “Taps” sounded as I came to attention and rendered a salute to the greatest man I have ever known. Tears finally came to my eyes. There are some things that will make even a Pettigrew cry.

Later, I would return to his grave and place the mission decals of STS-41D, STS-27, and STS-36 on the marker. Each patch had the name “Mullane” on it. They were Dad’s missions, too.