popular american history writers the of the past decade and airs every saturday at noon eastern. this week, martha ackmann discusses "the mercury 13." the true story of 13 women and the dream of spaceflight, an account of the women pilots who attempted to become america's first female astronauts in the 19 skis. the women passed the same tests as the mercury 7 astronauts, yet they were not selected 94 missions. this program is 40 minutes. to the odyssey bookshop. it's my pleasure tonight to be introducing to you martha ackman, and we are launching her extraordinary book, "the mercury 13: the untold story of 13 american women and the dream of space flight." martha ackman is associate professor of women's studies at mount jolla college as well as a journalist whose articles have appeared in the "new york times," the "boston globe," the "chicago tribune" and the "los angeles times." in 1961, just as nasa launched

its first man into space, 13 women underwent secret testing in hopes of becoming america's first female astronauts. they passed the same battery of tests at the legendary lovelace foundation as did the mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys' club at nasa and capitol hill. the ussr sent its first woman into space in the 1963. the united states did not follow suit for another 20 years. martha ackman tells the story of these remarkable women, all cracker jack pilots and patriots who sometimes sacrificed jobs and marriages for a chance to participate in america's space race against the soviet union. martha ackman spoke extensively with these women and interviewed chuck yeager, john glenn, scott carpenter and others at nasa and in the white house, with firsthand knowledge of the program. it provocative tribute to those extraordinary women, the

mercury 13 is an unforgettable story of determination, resilience and inextinguishable hope. we are greatly indebted to martha for all the hard work tos story and for compelling writing which makes this book a fascinating read. please join me in welcoming martha ackman. >> thank you. thank you very much. it's a real privilege to be able to share the story of these accomplished women pilots, but it's an even greater treat to be able to do it at the odyssey bookshop, the absolute cultural heartbeat of our community here, so joan, thank you very much for inviting me, and as i look around at this room of so many friends and neighbors, many of whom have been with this story for a very long

time, since i began, i kind of look at these faces and begin to say when it comes to the mercury 13, that's the mercury 14 and 15, and these people know the story as well as i do, so i thank you very much for being here. as joan said, this is the story of 13 accomplished women pilots who were secretly tested for astronaut viability in 1960 and 1961. they were the top of the heap among american women pilots at that time. some were champions in air races, others set aviation world records for altitude and long distance flying, and like most women who tried to get jobs as pilots in the 1960's, it was a very rough go. so many of these women, while they were spending their weekends breaking world records, nine to five, monday through friday, they worked as third grade teachers in akron, ohio, or as journalists in

oakland. some who were lucky enough to earn their living as pilots had to patch together jobs and some found themselves getting planes off the runway as charter pilots and announcing to the passengers, "this is your captain speaking" and when a female voice came on some passengers were not so happy that they were heading off to liftoff with a female pilot. so encountering exterior, extraordinary obstacles. what i thought i'd do this evening is to read from three sections in the book and then take some questions as well. the first section that i'd like to read is from the opening, and i chose it because it introduces the characters of the mercury 13 as well as some of the other central figures in the book. you'll be hearing about jerry cobb, who was the number one woman pilot among this group, america's best hope to be the first woman astronaut in the world, as well as two simply

astonishing physicians, aerospace docks, randi lovelace of the lovelace foundation that joan mentioned who along with his colleague, brigadier donald flickinjer of the air force, designed the medical tests for john glenn, allen p shepard and all the rest, ran them through the tests at the love lace clinic in new mexico, and then helped select those men for america's first astronauts. so you'll be hearing about don flickinger and randi lovelace, geri cobb, as well as be introduced to jaums webb who during that time was the head of nasa. and this is a scene that sort of sets up the mood of the country, space fever that was just engulfing the united states in the early 1960's, and a particular moment that happened at a most inauspicious place, a chamber of commerce luncheon, a chicken and green peas

luncheon in oklahoma city in 1961. it begins on a snowy january afternoon a few days after john kennedy had been sworn in as president. geri cobb sat down next to james webb for a chamber of commerce lunch then oklahoma city, honoring the state's leaders in the aerospace center. one could not tell by look at her quiet demeanor, but cobb was sitting on secrets. after a chance meeting with dr. lovelace and general flickinger just months after the first press conference introducing the mercury 7 astronauts, cobb became a test subject at the lovelace foundation. lovelace and flickinger had found their exceptional female pilot. when lovelace later revealed the astonishing results of cobb's test scores at a scientific conference in stockholm, reporters began calling cobb's parents in the middle of the night, trying to track down the taciturn the young woman the media instantly dubbed america's

first woman astronaut. the past year had been a whirlwind for cobb and now she held another confidence. dr. lovelace had just begun to test 12 more women pilots and she had helped select them. the first candidate had already arrived in albuquerque at the lovelace foundation and more women would soon follow that spring and summer. all the women had been pledged to secrecy, but cobb knew their identities and she consider them exceptional pilots and ideal test subjects. there were identical twins from california, jan and marion dietrich. the youngster, 22-year-old mary wallace, from to us, new mexico. the owner of a flight operation in michigan, bernie steadman, the air force reserve officer from akron, jean hickson, the flight instructor from georgia, myrtle hagel, the engineer from kansas city, sarah gorlick, executive pilot from houston, rhea hurley, forest service pilot from chicago,

irene leftington. aviation instructor from the university of oklahoma, genora stumbau. the sassy air race competitor from dallas, geraldine sloan, and the u.s. senator's wife from michigan, jayne hart. as cobb made idle conversation with james web at the luncheon's head table, he hoped he wouldn't ask her about the new mexico test. the day before, the "new york times" had printed a brief article reporting that 12 unnamed women were undergoing astronaut exams. cobb did not want to be asked about the women's identities or any other details that would wind up in another newspaper. but webb did not have as much time to talk with cobb as he expected. while luncheon dishes were being cleared, he received a phone call from the science advisor to president kennedy. webb left the dais, walked out of the the room and took the call. what he heard surprised him. kennedy wanted him in washington immediately to discuss with vice president lyndon johnson the prospect of

taking over leadership of nasa. though flattered, webb was cautious, thinking that a scientist would be better suited for the job. the white house persisted and webb finally agreed to fly out to washington that evening. he hung up the phone and returned to his seat next to geri cobb. staring at the desserts in front of them, both cobb and webb tried not to divulge their space secrets. after meeting with johnson and kennedy, james webb surprised himself by reversing his initial impulse about the job. "i never said no to any president," he remark the. within minutes of webb's acceptance. kennedy shuttled him to his press secretary and then disappeared to deliver his first state of the union address, to be delivered that evening. standing before the white house press corps, perhaps a little stunned by the sheer speed of the decision, webb greeted reporters as president kennedy's nominee for nasa administrator. as soon as he was able to get to the phones, webb called his wife with the news.

the radio was on, she told him, and she had just heard the announcement. that evening, with only 10 days at president behind him, kennedy delivered his state of the union address. it was the young president's opportunity to straight himself from the previous administration -- or to separate himself from the previous administration, to take bold new strides and claim new ground. what he learned in the last week and a half was staggering, the president admitted, and there were reasons for the nation to be both optimistic and concerned. the economy, defense, even the exploration of outer space, needed aggressive action, he declared. while the united states was leaving the soviets in scientific research of the solar system, kennedy said, the russians were ahead in building powerful rockets capable of hoisting a man into orbit. to those who were listening carefully, kennedy's news about the space program did not arouse much enthusiasm. leading the world in scientific research was not half as thrilling as being

poised to launch a man into orbit. it was a little like saying the united states was ahead in chalkboard equations while the soviets were practically counting down to blastoff. well, of course you think so most of us remember, even, that yui gegaren of the soviet union was the first astronaut to orbit the earth in the 1961, followed several weeks later by allen shepard. he didn't quite make the record that kennedy had hoped. geri cobb then goes into flashback to detail the experiments of the tests that she went through, as well as beginning to assemble the rest of the women from all parts of the country and take those same exams. they were really quite invasive and extensive exams, some 75 in all, including for

several of the women who then were able to go on to the next stage of them, a rather remarkable test involving sensory isolation, and this is a section that talks about how cobb as well as some of the other women were tested to see how they would cope with what scientists at that time thought would be the great void of space, the silence, and the stillness, the darkness of space. really testing their psychological adaptability. so you'll be hearing about dr. jay shirley, a very distinguished doctor at the oklahoma city who ran these tests, and comparing them to what the men went through at wright patterson field. now this is where their tests began to differ. up until this time they were exactly the same but i think you'll see in this case that the women's tests stretch them a bit farther.

shirley's assistant, dr. shirley's assistant described the tank room as a bomb shelter with thick insulated walls and a heavy door leading into the observer's station. in the center of the room was a large circular tank, 10 feet in diameter, and eight and a half feet deep. inside was slowly rippling water set at 93.5 degrees fahrenheit, a temperature precisely chosen so that the subject was not able to distinguish between his or her own skin and the water itself. it was as if the body and the fluid environment became one continuous medium. shirley found the temperature, along with the buoyancy created by epsom salts, created a kind of great salt lake, what he called a uniform tactile feel that simulated weightlessness. the tank room was insulated for sound so that any noise was silenced, barking dogs,

activity down the hall, noisy pipes, even the distant rumble of trucks outside the hospital, was quelled. the room was so silent that subjects reported they could hear the sound of their own hearts beating. and occasionally, their intestines. one said he could hear the eerie slide of tendons being stretched. one physician reported the snapping sound of his own heart valve closing at the end of each rhythmic beat. the human body, shirley observed, is a real noise machine. other precautions were taken to eliminate light, odor, pressure, vibration, heat, cold, and any sort of gravity in the tank. a failing of the wright patterson isolation room, according to dr. shirley, was that the project mercury men never had the sensation of free floating suspension. they could stand, even sit in a chair just as they did anywhere else on earth. in the early stages of the

oklahoma city tank runs, the subjects also wore a mask pulled down over their entire head so that they could float face down in the water. the mask allowed for inhalation and expiration of air, but it also leaked and small pools of water would creep into a subject's ears and disrupt her solitude. for geri cobb's run, shirley used foam flotation pill ocean behind her head and hips, which allowed her to drift heads up. foregoing the mask might well have added to cobb's piece of mind. it was a grotesque rubbery hood that resembled those worn by prisoners headed for execution. just before cobb was set to go in the tank, a reporter contacted dr. shirley and asked if he might try the experiment in order to provide the public with a firsthand account. the journalist's record provided an unusually detailed

report of the isolation tank's effect on the mind of a mentally healthy person. it also offered a striking contrast to what cobb would soon experience and what she would say or not say in the microphone hanging from a thin cord above the dark water. after preliminary hearings about what to expect in the inner room, the 29-year-old reporter spent his first half hour motionless and engaged in an audible dialogue about -- monologue, i'm sorry -- about work that needed to be completed on the job, his son's well being and his wife's recent sleepwalking episode. he then turned his thoughts to an unexpected letter from a former girlfriend, criticisms concerning the younger generation of journalists and childhood memories. by the second hour, he spoke of the need to move, to exercise and expressed surprise that he did not want a cigarette. he told of his stark loneliness except for, in his words, my very real companions, my thoughts and memories. he also expressed empathy for sam, the nasa monkey who recently had been launched

into space and endured what the reporter considered to be a similar situation. he passed the time by whistling and dropped off into a deep, brief nap in which he remembered the image of a sawdust cream cone. by the third hour he thought he heard dogs barking and a crack listen sound and he launched into an edition of a barroom song. for a moment he was in an effect static mood and quickly , crying how many people really think about what it's all about, how many people ever, ever think just once about love? as quickly as the grief had overtaken him, laughing returned. he told a joke. joe, what do you do when your engine quits at 200 feet? he convulsed with laughter at the reply. you land the son of a bitch. he sang some more, pondered getting out and angrily replied to a voice he heard speaking to him. you, voice, keep quiet up there, quiet. then he sighed deeply, felt

profoundly bored and returned to thoughts of the space monkey, commenting with irritation, i just as well might be sam for all i can be or do or think or hear or smell or taste. for 10 minutes he convinced himself that his time in the tank was unprofitable because it revealed no information and he felt fine. he questioned agai heard sounds, then suddenly got out of the tank. during his four and a half hours spent floating in isolation, his longofilence wasx minutes long. in a post-run interview, he appeared calm, even happy, but e if you put a person in there just kept him, fed him by vein, he just flat out would die." geri cobb's run in the tank shattered every previoushundd sd already participated in the experiment, and six hours in the water was thought to be the absolute limit of tolerance. cor isolation for nine hours and

40 minutes. her run finally terminated byss. dr. shirley was astonished by cobb's ability to withstand solitude. equally extraordinary was the taped transcript owid i the tan. the reporter's monologue went on for pages and pages. cobbin a period of more than twice as long filled only two sheets of paper. in his conclusion of his report to dr. lovelace,hat he believed geri cobb possessed extraordinary, if not unique, sn astronaut. citing her red acceptance of direction, responsibility, and noted the smoot to cobb's friend, reporter ivy coffey, who later interviewed dr. shirley for an article on her run in the tank, the psychologist offered his most

revealing analysis. shedding professional medical jargon, shirley went right to the point.obb he says, is a girl who excellence in loneliness. >> and the final piece that i would like to read for you comes near the end of the book. the women as they were preparing to take their final stems of tests, not sensory isolation, i'm sorry, but space simulation tests at the pensacola naval air station, were halted when they needed to get an ok from the navy. nasa stepped in and said no, we don't want the women to go farther. and it was at that point that a very pivotal thing occurred and that is that the women said no way.gng to eshey began to lobby congress. geri cobbmary advocate for all of the women, along with jayne hart, who as

i mentioned in the first passage was the senator -- wife of senator phigan. so this passage has to do with the payoff for some of their lobbying when they went to see lyndon johnson, who was head of the space council. >> hart's lobbying worked. within days of her request for an interview, the vice president agreed to meet and hart wired geri cobb in oklahoma, asking her to leave immediately for washington. lyndon johnson wasn't an especially important ally to win. not only had johnson gui eadated nasa in 1958, he also of the president's space liaison with nasa. more important, the slp understood that -- vice president also understood that space travel promised greater benefits to the country than schewas keenly aware that space flight could inspire nthused with john glenn's orbit that he had flown to the rsonally acp

to cape canaveral, and johnson wanted to be recognized publicly as the admiraen glenn and his family later made their triumphant squeezedhe united states into the front seat of the astronaut's open convertible. people lining the streets on that rainy day in washington president as they did on glenn. lyndon johnson's massive build and large gestures all but he looked like a big, excited blood hound, all ears and and insistent head. before the meeting with geri cobb and janie hart, johnson quickly scandal the background materials liz carpenter had prepared. she urged the vice president to give the women some encouragement and drafted a letter to nasa's james johnson'. the letter, while not a ringing endorsement of women

astronauts, asked if any women r astronauts, or if they had been disqualified simply for women. i'm sure you agree that sex should not be a reason for disqualifying a candidate for space, carpenter drafted in johnson's letter. and indeed the issue of women in space was getting publicity in the press, thanks to interviews hart and cobb had been conducting with reporters. the morning of cobb and hart's meeting with johnson, congressman ken heckler of west virginia called for women astronauts, posting in the congressional letter a copy cobb's recent speech before the women's space symposium. heckler prefaced cobb's address with comments in his capacity as a member of the house committee on science and astronautics. i believe that she wud give serious consideration to the inclusion of women among our future astronauts, he said. columnists cre ao weighing in. a science writer for the dallas times herald offered a let them vote. condemnation of let them wear pants. let them shoot pool.

but please, mr. vice president, don't let them go into space. the column presented a mock astronauts at the controls of an orbiting space capsule. dialogue that was filled with stereotypes about women's lack of technical knowledge, fascination with interior decorating, and absent mindedness. this little thing a ma bob has jiggled off the gizmo, the woman astronaut reported. the column was illustrated with a drawing of geranium 7, adorned with tieback curtains, w winding garland of fl a caricature of lbj looked on in horror at the frilly capsule. the vice president agreed to meet with the women at 11:00 a.m. in his office across from the senate chambers. a master of political real estate, johnson maintained his senate leadership office after he assumed the vice presidency. journalists around capitol hill referred to the elaborate chambers of office p-38 as the taj mahal.

it was an impressive room with views of the supreme court, a large crystal chandelier, and ornate frescoes on the ceiling. as she began, cobb focused immediately on the scientific benefits that could be gained by sending a woman into space. she presented johnson with the same points she had been making for nearly two years. women weighed less, ate less, consumed less oxygen than men. therefore, women would need less booster power to propel them into space. recent studies, she explained, prove that women showed an amazing ability to be withstand isolation and inactivity. she reviewed the tests in the isolation tank that she had completed with dr. shirley in oklahoma city, and indicated that wally funk and rhea hurley had performed equally well. new research, she continued, revealed that women could withstand more noise, heat, and vibration than men. with such results, cobb argued, how could the united states government discontinue testing of women astronauts? hart then added her points.

space should not be blocked off as an environment for men only, she said. it was an antiquated idea to suggest that women only wanted to stay home tied to the kitchen. women wanted to explore the universe, push themselves to the far reaches of their ability just as men did. besides, opening the door to women was part of a large national effort toward equity and fairness for all americans, as johnson knew, president kennedy himself had announced on the very day that john glenn had orbited the earth that he was establishing a commission on the status of women. in an executive order posted at all government agencies, including nasa, the president made to clear, women are entitled to equality of opportunity for employment in government and industry. johnson, looking at the ceiling above his head, noticed four al gore cal frescoes depicting am business.

all four figures were women, dressed in impressive robes, staring down at him. many minority groups were asking for attention from nasa. the vice president told cobb. they wanted to be astronauts too. if the united states allowed women in space, then blacks, mexicans, chinese and other minorities would want to fly too. cobb listened politely, looking prim in her tailored dress with three strands of pearls around her neck. what's wrong with minorities serving as astronauts if they're qualified, she thought to herself. johnson did not answer her question. she continued, if the vice president were proposing that only citizens who were in the majority should be launched into space, then women should be considered. women were certainly not in the minority, she thought in terms of numbers, money, votes, and tax dollars. leaning towards the women with a pained expression on his face, lyndon johnson looked directly at cobb and hart and gave his final thought. as much as he would like to help the cause of women astronauts, it really was an issue for james web and those at nasa.

it hurt him to have to say it because he was eager to help, but the question just was not up to him to address. jonsson called an end to the meeting and started talking on his private phone. janie hart was angry. she knew johnson was putting on a performance that made it look as though it was painful to tell us. clearly johnson was not going to lend a hand to their cause even though a word from the vice president to james webb would have made an enormous difference. what hart did not understand was why. hart and cobb left johnson's chambers and met with a group of reporters outside in the capitol hallway. hart stood with her arms tightly folded across her chest, her pocketbook stuffed into the crook of her arm. her goal at this point seemed to be to mind her manners and hold her anger in check. cobb leaned near the wall. her face set rigidly in a practiced smile. i'm hoping that something will come of these meetings, she politely said as reporters scribbled in their notebooks. later, newspaper reports declared that two would-be

astronettes had pleaded their case in washington. the vice president, using the current jargon from cape canaveral, had said the women were a-ok but the decision was not his to make. co letter to james webb that liz carpenter had drafted for the vice president's signature. johnson decided not to show it to them because he had no intention of signing it. he did not want to ask james webb to look into the question of women astronauts. perhaps, johnson thought, starting a women's program would jeopardize the whole works, carpenter late drew carpenter's draft across the large desk and scribbled forcibly across the bottom of the page. in his distinctive large hand, johnson announced the verdict that hart and cobb and the press never knew. let's stop this now. thank you very much.