Fifty years ago Jan. 27, Virgil "Gus" Grissom lay on his back in the Apollo 1 command spacecraft, his face toward the sky. The view, not particularly breathtaking, was blocked by metal and wire in the cramped space.The big, blue sky was something he had already left behind twice before.The big blue sky that inspired him as a child in a small Southern Indiana town to leave the earth. It wasa routine test to laythe ground for a trip to the moon—the celestial finish lineGrissom had hopedto cross himself. But veteran pilot Grissom never touched the moon. He and two other members of his crew were killed by an accidental fire during thetest on Jan. 27. Fifty years later, many have forgotten, but some never will.
The American tradition is that of the pioneer. From those who continued moving west beyond the AppalachianMountains in the 19th century to those who saw the moon and decided to sit on rockets to get there.
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom was one of those pioneers. From humble beginnings in the small Southern Indiana town of Mitchell, Grissom became one of the prolific national heroes of his time -- one of the country's original seven astronauts,the second American in space, the first American in space twice, the first man to maneuver a spacecraft and a commanding member of the first Apollo crew with its sightson the moon.
Tragically,Grissom, withfellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Edward White, was killed in an accidental fire during an Apollo 1 test on a launch pad 50 years ago, Jan. 27.
Tragic as it was, its enduring legacy is the country's — humanity's — visits to the moon, said Grissom's son Scott.
"If they had nothad that happen, I don’t know that they would’ve gotten to the moon," Scott said. "That’s what their legacy is. They made it possible for those 12 men to go to the moon, walk on it and return home safely.”
Fifty years later, Gus' legacy is obscured by those who lived. He was beaten to space byYuri Gagarinand Alan Shephard, John Glenn was the first to orbit the Earth and it was Neil Armstrong who ultimately stepped on the moon first.
It was in Southern Indiana that Grissom's lust to leave the Earth was born.
'SOFT SPOKEN HOOSIER'
Grissom was born April 3, 1926 in Mitchell. He was the firstof four children for Cecil and Dennis Grissom.
As a teenager, Grissom sold a BB gun his father gave him to finance his first airplane ride, his father-in-law told the Evansville Courier in 1965. He would watch the clouds and earth move below him by flying small planes at a track in Bedford, Indiana.
He didn't fare well at team sports, and instead was a high-ranking Boy Scout. Hebuilt model airplanes and flew planes for hobbies, according to his official NASA biography.
After graduating high school in 1944,he joined the Air Force to fly, but the end of World War II kept him grounded.
He wentPurdue University, where he received a mechanical engineering degree in 1950.In 1951, he re-enlisted in the Air Force, which deployed him to Korea. He flew his full 100-mission limit in six months. From there, he became a jet instructor and later a test pilot.
Grissom was the quintessential“soft spoken Hoosier,” said George Leopold, the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom."
He wasn’t one to draw attention to himself, but was competitive, intelligent and confident. Grissom considered himself to be a pioneer.
But he wasn’t perfect, Leopold said. The man could be crude and surly, and his grades weren't great. But growing up in Mitchell and becoming the man strapping rockets to his back, and doing so with confidence, came with hard work.
“No one handed anything to him. Whatever he got he earned it,” he said.
Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton met Grissom in the 1960s and said Grissom “radiated competence.” Not confidence, as the phrase typically goes.
“'Radiated competence.' I think that’s as good a description of Gus Grissom as you can find,” he said.
Grissom’s role in the space program was the engineering astronaut. “The guy who would do the unglamorous stuff that you needed to do for us to get into space, and get into orbit and then get to the moon,” Leopold said.
Americans revered Grissom.
“I think they appreciated he was sort of the blue-collar astronaut. The guy who was willing to do the grunt work to keep the program pointed in the right direction,” Leopold said.
Scott Grissom, now 66, recalled his father as a hard worker.
“You cannot believe how hard he worked. He was fully into it. But when he was home, he was staying with me and Mark,” he said.
Grissom took his sons fishing, skiing and hunting regularly. They would also travel to Indiana for the Indianapolis 500.
“My dad loved Indianapolis. He had a lot of friends in racing,” he said.
FROM THE EARTH TO SPACE
The early Cold War was defined by the quest to conquer space.
Grissom edged out a list of 110 to become one of the country’s original seven astronauts in April 1959.
Grissom's space legacy began with his trip aboard the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft. Alan Shepard was the first American in space, reaching the astral sky less than a month after Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. But Grissom was set to be the second American in spaceto prove the country's capabilities.
The Liberty Bell 7 launchedJuly 21, 1961. He flew a 15-minute sub-orbital flight — 118 miles high and 302 miles across at a top speed of 5,134 miles per hour. The journey set up John Glenn's orbits of the Earth.
It was a successful trip until the craft landed in the icy Atlantic Ocean. A malfunction caused the ship'shatch to blowaccidentally causing water to pour into the vessel. The sinking craft almost took Grissom with it.His suit was letting water in and letting air out, which he needed to stay buoyant. Death surrounded him.
He said to himself, "Well, you've gone through the whole flight, and now you're going to sink right here in front of all these people,” Grissom recounted in the book "We the Seven:By the Astronauts Themselves."
He never moved faster in his life, he said.
"He had to fight like hell to keep his head above water, and he almost drowned," Leopold said.
He managed to survive, but the Liberty Bell 7 sank, where it sat at the bottom of the Atlantic until the 1990s. Losing the spacecraft was hard on Grissom, who took it personally.
Some members of themedia did, too. Rather than focus on the accomplishment, reporters led with the loss of the Liberty Bell.
Leopold takes issue with author Tom Wolfe’s description of Grissom in his book “The Right Stuff,” which later became a movie. Wolfe accuses Grissom of being scared and exploding the Liberty Bell’s hatch, causing it to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic. The book and movie made lasting impressions of Grissom in pop culture.
“Tom Wolfe got it wrong,” Leopold said. “He never would’ve been a test pilot if he had gotten scared.”
It was not Grissom's last touch of space.
He became the first person to actually control a space craft, takingthe commanding pilot's seat for the Gemini 3 missionthat launched onMarch 23,1965. He and John Young flew three Earth orbits in the ninth U.S. spaceflight. It was 80,000 miles in five-hour trip in a cramped two-person capsule.
Grissom namedthe capsule "Molly Brown" after the play "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" — a nod to the Liberty Bell 7.NASA reportedly didn't care for the name, but his second choice wasn't much better to them: The Titanic.
Grissom famously ate a few bites of a corned beef sandwich John Young sneaked on the flight. NASA and Congress didn't see the humor in it. The tale is remembered at the Railroad Cafe in Mitchell, where "The Grissom" is a corned beef sandwich on the menu.
The country was enamored withGrissom and Young. Mitchell and cities across New York held parades in their honor. President Lyndon Johnson presented them withNASA's Distinguished Service Medal.
Around the time of the Gemini mission, Grissom expressed a fatalistic view of his service as an astronaut.
"If there is ever a serious accident in the program, it's probably going to be me," Grissom told his wife, according to Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on The Moon."
Scott Grissom said the entire family knew the risks Grissom took as an astronaut.
“It was hard, but that was our family’s contribution to the country. It was letting my father go do those things. … We knew there was a risk, but my dad was extremely sharp and extremely capable, and we felt if there was any kind of issue, he would’ve been able to handle the situation,” he said.
Each of Grissom's missions, and the missions of the other astronauts, were pushing the country --mankind -- closerto the moon.
The Apollo Space Program was to do just that.
Named after the god Apollo, who was said to ride his chariot through the sky and past the sun, Apollo 1 was the beginning of man’s ride to the moon. And it was the end for Grissom.
APOLLO 1: 'WE'VE GOT A FIRE IN THE co*ckPIT'
It was just supposed to a be routine test in preparation for a Feb. 21 launch into space. Grissom, White and Chaffe were the chosen to lead the first Apollo 1 mission -- a 14-day trip orbiting the earth.
Jan. 27, 1967 was a test run. The three men suited up and entered the Apollo command module. The three men laidon their backs;their faces toward the sky.
Suddenly, a sheet of fire.
It was 6:31 p.m. when across the open mic was a single chilling word: "Fire."
NASA's post-accident reportindicated it was probably Grissom who said that.
"We've got a fire in the co*ckpit," Chaffe said. Six seconds later. "We've got a bad fire. Let's get out." The transmission was stopped by a scream.
The fire lasted 25 seconds, because of the small amount of oxygen in the sealed craft. Less than a minute and they were dead.
Autopsies indicated they died of asphyxiation, within seconds probably. But they badly burned in the accident. According to the Senate report on the incident, temperatures reached as high as 1,000 degrees in the cramped space.
The craft had no emergency hatch -- as the Liberty Bell 7 had.It was filled with 100 percent oxygen. The hatch wasn't removed until five minutes after the fire. And firemen didn't arrive on scene until 9 minutes after the fire was reported.
The men never had a chance.
LEGACY: 'THE CONQUEST OF SPACE IS WORTH THE RISK OF LIFE'
Tucked away in the Southern Indiana woods of Spring Mill State Parkis the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" and Grissom's spacesuit.
The state of Indiana established the Virigil Grissom Memorial at the park in 1971. The exhibit features personal artifacts from Grissom’s life – report cards, family photos, his degrees, an entombed corned beef sandwich and the folded flag handed to his family at his funeral. Many of the items were donated by Betty Grissom, his wife who is still alive.
Property Manager Mark Young said the memorial has received updates a few times since it was opened, most recently six years ago.
Spring Mill State Park sees about 600,000 visitors a year. There’s no data on how many visit the memorial museum, but Young said visitors come from all 50 states and 23 countries.
The memorial sees several student field trips throughout the year. Young likes to point out Grissom's report cards to help inspire kids.
"I think it's good to point you don't have to make good grades ... but if you work really hard, you can be successful," he said.
There's not much else memorializing the Hoosier astronaut in Indiana. The airport in Bedford, where he flew as a teenager,is named after Grissom. The Air Force base in Peru, Indiana, also carry his moniker.Three schools in Indiana bear his name.
Purdue University has a "Grissom Hall." It was originally the home of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but Neil Armstrong, also a student at Purdue, took that mantle.
"But I think maybe they’ve gotten a little turned around on history. ... I think Purdue made a mistake," Scott Grissom said.
While Grissom isn’t as recognized across the state, Mitchell hasn’t forgotten its native son.
The town memorialized Grissom with a 44-foot tall limestone rocket shipin 1982on the lawn of town hall, the site where he attended elementary school. The stone rocket sits atop eight inscribed tabloids detailing Grissom's life.
And his boyhood home on Grissom Avenueis now a museum open to the public.
NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew with displays at the Kennedy Space Center, and launch pad 34 is preserved to remember the Apollo 1 crew.
A plaque at the launch pad reads: "In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach for the stars. Ad astra per aspera, (a rough road leads to the stars). God speed to the crew of Apollo 1."
One way to honor the legacy of Grissom, White and Chaffe is to publicly display the Apollo 1 craft, Leopold said.
Unlike the Soviets, the U.S. kept its space program in the public eye --the successes and the failures.
“One thing is for certain: It shouldn’t be sitting in a container in Langley, Virginia. It should be on display,” Leopold said about Apollo 1.
In a first-time move by NASA, the hatch that sealed the three men to their deaths will be on display at the Kennedy Space Center.
Grissom's family will have a private look before opening to the public Friday, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 accident.
The Apollo 1 legacy has long been obscured by other high profile deaths within the same week of the accident.The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion was Jan. 28, 1986, which killed seven, and the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion was on Feb. 1, 2003, which also killed seven.
Space heroes dying doesn't help continue the legacy of Apollo 1 and other astronauts.
Gene Cernan, who walked in space, visited the moon twice and was the last human to do so, died last week. John Glenn, who Grissom worked beside and paved the way for his legacy, died in December.
Six of the 12 men who walked on the moon still live, but all are in their 80s.
“I think a lot of people think that Gus got the short end of the stick. … His flights were as important as John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, because it’s all a part of a continuum. Each step would build on the one before. You don’t get to the moon until you have an accident on Apollo 1 and you fix the spacecraft," Leopold said.
The role of astronauts in the early days of space pioneers were test pilots. Every mission, every test, every step could mean death for the cause -- the cause of pushing the mission forward and giving the explorers new ground to learn from.
Grissom, the pioneer, understood this role.
“OccasionallyI lie in bed at night and think: Now what in hell do I want to get up in that thing for? Especially I think that way when I consider the two boys and my wife. Why do I want to risk my life?”
His question had an answer.
"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program," Grissom said."The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
