Alan Shepard Visits Washington

On the morning of May 8, Alan Shepard and the six other Mercury astro­nauts were flown from Grand Bahama Island, where Shepard had been brought after his recovery from his suborbital mission, to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and then by helicopter to the White House lawn. They were met in the Rose Garden by a gathering that included President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, members of Congress, NASA leaders, and others. Awarding the NASA Distinguished Service Medal to Shepard, the president said: “how proud we are of him, what satisfaction we take in his accomplishment, what a service he has rendered to his country.” He noted that “this flight was made out in the open with all the possibilities of failure, which would have been damaging to our country’s prestige. Because great risks were taken in that regard, it seems to me that we have some right to claim that this open society of ours which risked much, gained much.”8 After the award ceremony, the seven astronauts and others in the gather­ing joined President Kennedy in the Oval Office; the group totaled 20 to 25 people, including Vice President Johnson, the chairs of the Senate and House space committees, and several managers from NASA. The astronauts sat on couches on either side of the president, who “gushed with questions.” He and Shepard discussed how Shepard’s flight had demonstrated the abil­ity of a human not only to survive, but also to carry out various functions in space; Kennedy seemed well aware of the reservations of his science advisers on this point. Alan Shepard recalls that “everybody certainly was running over with confidence at that time because the flight had gone so well and we had proved our point. . . that a man can operate effectively in space.” Robert Gilruth, the director of NASA’s Space Task Group that was manag­ing Project Mercury, was present. He remembers Kennedy saying, “Look, I want to be first.” Gilruth replied: “Well, you’ve got to pick a job that’s so difficult, that it’s new, that they’ll [the Soviets] have to start from scratch. They can’t just take their old rocket and put another gimmick on it and do something we can’t do.” Gilruth added, “it’s got to be something that requires a great big rocket, like going to the moon. Going to the moon will take a new rocket. . . and if you want to do that, I think our country could probably win because we’d both have to start from scratch.” Kennedy’s reply was “I want to go to the Moon.” Gilruth, himself only five years older than Kennedy, added that while Kennedy seemed to accept Gilruth’s view, “he was a young man; he didn’t have all the wisdom he would have had. If he’d been older, he probably would never have done it.”

After leaving the White House, Shepard was taken by President Kennedy to a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters; this was not on the planned schedule for the day, but Shepard’s surprise visit provoked a tumultu­ous welcome. After his stopover at the broadcasters’ meeting, Shepard and the other astronauts, accompanied by the vice president, paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol as thousands, assembling with little advance notice, cheered. Shepard suggests that “these two things—the successful dem­onstration of man’s capability and the public support of a program which immediately became to them a very thrilling, exciting program—affected him [President Kennedy] in his decision-making process.” After a “throng – packed, pulsing” meeting with members of Congress, the group went to the State Department for a luncheon hosted by Vice President Johnson; then Shepard held a press conference.9

As he left the luncheon to go first to the White House and then to the airport to catch the plane that would take him to Southeast Asia for two weeks, Lyndon Johnson carried a large manila envelope. In it was the Webb – McNamara report recommending sending Americans to the Moon.