small ascent stage moved out smartly from the valley of Taurus-Littrow with Cernan and Schmitt and their precious payload of rocks, as well as our dreams.
The lunar module now pitched forward, gaining velocity as well as altitude in its dash to capture the rendezvous orbit. Ed Fendell had done well again, capturing the liftoff in a blaze of sparks, debris, and motion with the Rover TV camera.
The images of the lunar liftoff, the faces of my control team and their voices, are forever captured in my memory. The finality of our mission was expressed in a simple plaque left on the surface by Cernan: “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972 A.D. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.”
The rendezvous ended in a good, tight Navy formation during the CSM visual inspection. And then at docking there was a brief and joyous exchange with Evans. We were not home free yet, but a lot of critical milestones on Apollo 17 were now behind us.
It was traditional since John Glenn’s first U.S. manned orbital mission for a message from the President. I had been angry when Kennedy’s planned message caught us right at the end of Glenn’s first orbit. Kraft’s reminder that day, “The President is the boss,” still rang in my ears as I reviewed the message from President Nixon to be read to the crew. The presidential messages always seemed to come after a critical event, and when the odds radically improved that the crew would come home safely.
The crew was busier than ever as they prepared to open the hatch and enter the command module. Immediately after the docking, I passed the President’s message to the CapCom. The message began with the customary “attaboys,” followed by glowing words about the Apollo program’s impact on humanity. The message was designed for a spot on the evening news.
The concluding words were the bitter wine: “This may be the last time in this century that men will walk on the Moon!” We had started out with John Kennedy’s vision and command: get a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Nixon’s message was, effectively, Apollo’s obituary.
Two hours later, I took off my white vest and stowed my headset. My career as a flight director was at an end. Flight directors do not retire to the blast of trumpets or to a roll of drums. There had been no formal change- of-command ceremony for Kraft, Hodge, Lunney, or Charlesworth. One day they just packed up their headsets and left the console. They were not there on the next mission.
Griffin and I decided to do it a bit differently, handing over to the new generation of flight directors in lunar orbit. We felt it was important to pass the torch so that a new generation, born in Apollo, would lead the teams into the future. Griffin’s Gold Team became Neil Hutchinson’s Silver Team for the return journey to Earth.
Chuck (Skinny) Lewis, one of five college students in the first class of flight controllers, a graduate of the Zanzibar site and my wingman for many missions, assumed command of my White Team, now dubbed the Bronze. Just as Kraft had passed me the baton in real time, I now passed it to Lewis.
On occasion, flight directors take over the CapCom’s job in selecting the crew wake-up music. For Lewis’s first prime shift, bringing the crew home from lunar orbit, Griffin and I selected “Light My Fire,” by the Doors (listed as the Lettermen in the flight director’s log), to welcome a new generation of flight directors. It was time for Lewis to fly solo, so I moved to the viewing room as he gave his Go to bring home the command module,
For the splashdown, I continued a tradition established in Gemini 9. If my team had done especially well I would wear a celebration vest. Splashy, gaudy, it was my way of saying, “Thanks, well done.” Marta knew how I felt about leaving the console. We both shared the pride in my work, in the Mission Control teams, and in America.
Marta made a surprise vest, my final vest as a flight director, for the Apollo 17 landing. It was a spectacular creation, and the favorite of all my vests, made of a metallic thread with broad red, white, and blue stripes, the colors of our flag and also the colors of the first three flight directors. For me the vest stood for America, President Kennedy, outer space, the many firsts, and the Brotherhood of Flight Control.
Proudly displaying my resplendent vest, I said thanks to my bosses and my teams, and, “Thanks, America, for the privilege of serving you.” When the crew’s feet hit the deck of the carrier, I lit the traditional cigar and cried like a baby. I cried for hours.
Flight directors’ colors are retired just like numbers on football jerseys. At retirement, a proclamation is read declaring that the color will never be used again. The proclamation is hung on the wall of the control room in which the flight director last served.
The words of the proclamations are written by one’s peers, the only people who matter in our business. Mine read,
Whereas his leadership and inspiration molded the flight control team, which was vital to the first rendezvous, manned lunar exploration, and the study of man, Earth, stars, and technology.
Be it resolved that on behalf of the personnel of the Flight Control Division, the color “White” be retired from the list of active flight control teams to forever stand in tribute to “White Flight,”
My proclamation now joined with those of the pioneer flight directors on the wall of the third-floor Mission Control room at the Johnson Space Center. Over the years other proclamations would be added, including one recognizing the honorary Gray flight director, Bill Tindall. We were all members of the Brotherhood who opened the door to space.
EPILOGUE
The success of the early American space program was a tribute to the leadership of a politically adept NASA Administrator and a relatively small number of engineers, scientists, and project managers who formed and led NASA in the early years. This team, with the technologies it created, reached for and attained a goal that many of its peers thought impossible. A clear goal, a powerful mandate, and a unified team allowed the United States to move from a distant second in space into a preeminent position during my tenure at Mission Control.
Entering the twenty-first century, we have an unimaginable array of technology and a generation of young Americans schooled in these technologies. With our powerful economy, we can do anything we set our mind to do. Yet we stand with our feet firmly planted on the ground when we could be exploring the universe.
Three decades ago, in a top story of the century, Americans placed six flags on the Moon. Today we no longer try for new and bold space achievements; instead we celebrate the anniversaries of the past.
In the 1960s just beyond the midpoint of the twentieth century, we were a restless nation when a young President, John F. Kennedy, awakened us to our responsibilities and the opportunities we had to make our nation and our world better. Overnight it seemed we became a nation committed to causes. Young and old marched for civil rights, or journeyed to foreign lands in the newly formed Peace Corps. Pictures of Earth from space gave new emphasis to the environmental movement, and again people marched. While we often moved to different cadences, our nation was alive with ideals. We were in motion. Violence was everywhere but so was a conviction that we must somehow make this a better world.
Thirty years later I feel a sense of frustration that the causes that advanced us so rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s seem to have vanished from the national consciousness. We have become a nation of spectators, unwilling to take risks or act on strong beliefs. Since I grew up in the world of manned space exploration, I am particularly frustrated that we have abandoned the frontier that was opened in the 1960s. The American space industries and the NASA team that built and operated the spacecraft no longer exist. The proud spacecraft design and manufacturing teams at Grumman, North American, and McDonnell are only a memory.
Since my retirement from the space program in 1994 I have spoken to over a hundred thousand Americans in hundreds of business, professional, and civic forums. The story of our early years in space, of tragedy and ultimate
