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Grissom feels America forgot 1st NASA tragedy
Unlike Challenger and Columbia, NASA swept Apollo 1 deaths in 1967 aside, widow says.
By Mary Beth Schneider
Published: February 2, 2003
Betty Grissom has a wish for the families of space shuttle Columbia's lost crew.
She hopes they get answers.
She hopes that someday they know what happened.
Because on Jan. 27, 1967, her husband, Hoosier Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and two other astronauts were killed when a deadly fire swept their command module as they trained for what would have been the first Apollo space mission.
"I've waited 35 years for somebody to come by my home and explain to me about the Apollo 1 fire," Grissom said. "I'm still waiting."
Saturday was a hard day for Grissom. Everyone in America, and in many corners of the world, was grieving for the seven crew members killed in the Columbia disaster. She is one of the few who knows just how the pain feels.
"Right now, my sympathies go to the families. Hopefully, NASA will do a better job of keeping them informed. It doesn't pay to be first."
Just as Gus Grissom was among the first astronauts to risk his life, Betty Grissom was among the first to know the price those risks entail.
Betty Grissom and her two sons, then 16 and 13, were in Houston, not at Cape Canaveral, in 1967 as Gus Grissom prepared for his mission. On Jan. 27, 1967, things went horribly wrong.
To Betty Grissom, so did what happened afterward.
Unlike Jan. 28, 1986, when space shuttle Challenger exploded, the survivors of the Apollo 1 tragedy weren't wrapped in the embrace of a nation.
Almost from the moment the family left Arlington National Cemetery, where Grissom is buried, "we were cut off," his widow said. "I never heard from anybody."
Saturday, an emotional President Bush called the families of the Columbia from the Oval Office, telling them, "I wish I was there to hug and cry and comfort you right now."
But in 1967, there was no comforting phone call from President Lyndon B. Johnson. No offers of counseling. No funds created to put her boys through college.
They went, all right. Both Scott and Mark followed their dad's footsteps to Purdue University, and both became pilots. But it took a lawsuit against NASA to get the money that paid those bills; she received a $350,000 settlement, 40 percent of which went to attorneys.
NASA's attitude, Grissom said, was to talk as little as possible about the disaster, in hopes the public would just forget about it and any hint of controversy would fade away. Officials even stopped referring to her husband's mission by its rightful name, Apollo 1, and called it "204" instead.
"It's because if you say 204, nobody knows what you're talking about."
It hurts Grissom and her sons that Apollo 1 is so forgotten. Last week, they held a memorial service at Pad 34 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the place where Grissom and fellow astronauts Edward White and Roger Chaffee died.
It went unnoticed by almost everyone, including the media. The next day, though, the 17th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy got the attention that they didn't.
Scott Grissom, now a pilot for Federal Express whose own dreams of becoming an astronaut were cut short by imperfect eyesight, was riveted by Saturday's news like most Americans.
"We feel terrible for the families. We've been there and done that," Scott Grissom said. "An accident like this is devastating to thousands of people. The whole effort to get one of these things in space and back -- lots of people have their hearts and soul in it."
His dad did, he said, and he knows his father would want the space program to go on.
"I think that my father pretty much captured it when he said that the exploration of space is worth the risk of life."
Grissom is less certain. "We were the ones that got left behind."
A pure oxygen environment with a thousand electrical components, cold o-rings, "greener" lox insulation--
And John Glenn who protected Clinton's Chinagate treason was rewarded with a space ride.
There is no upper limit on temperature. The center of the sun is 18,000,000 degrees Centigrade.
Clinton, Glenn and Kerry to the center of the sun in Jules Verne's Karmic Rocketry Illustrated.
