The Astronaut Wives Club Makes Ordinary Seem Pretty Awesome
By Stephanie Robertson
When I first moved to Huntsville, I stayed busy filling out teaching applications and working three jobs to keep a roof overhead and Ramen Noodles on my table. One of my jobs was at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.
Prior to that, hailing from rural Southwest Alabama, I hadn’t much thought of rockets and stuff.
Later, I met my husband and ended up staying in the Rocket City.
Recently, I picked up The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel.
It looked interesting and is relevant to the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing. While the early astronauts spiraled above the clouds, their wives (in high-heels and A-Line dresses) stayed on the ground—caring for children and keeping house.
The book cover is compelling—seven Mercury wives in pastel dresses pose around a brightly-painted test capsule against the blue Virginia sky. Each of the “original seven” smiles in their NASA-approved pink lipstick.
The smiles are as broad as their pride but conceal the inner turmoil of the women. The Astronaut Wives Club was a bit of an eye-opener. Of course, any wife would be conflicted about having her husband launched atop a firecracker emitting 75,000 pounds of thrust. But from 1961 to the 1969 lunar landing, only seven out of thirty marriages survived, according to The New York Post.
Sure, I figured the astronauts made pretty good money, but I didn’t realize that the Astro-families received extra perks: clothes, cars, trips, houses, teas with Jackie Kennedy…celebrity. That’s an awfully high payment against strong marriages, fidelity, and peace of mind.
Pros: The Astronaut Wives Club describes in detail what it was like to be the wife of an astronaut. In addition, the book made me very thankful for our opportunities as 21st Century women.
The wives were there for each other in sisterly solidarity, and that bond remains to this day. The book says a lot about loyalty and friendship.
Cons: There is some language in The Astronaut Wives Club. The only F-word was in the context of the Vietnam conflict and hippies.
I was a little disappointed that the book didn’t focus more on what the women experienced in the context of each NASA milestone, such as the lunar landing. That was such a very big deal!
The celebrity of the astronauts and their families surprised me a bit. In fact, Life magazine was allowed into the Astro-families’ homes, and the media was ever-present.
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Not long after I moved to Huntsville, the Apollo 13 movie was released. It seemed cool to be an astronaut or an Astro-wife, but not after reading The Astronaut Wives Club. The book made me want to keep both feet on the ground. Being a regular American suddenly seemed like a pretty good life.
