>> i think we have time for a few questions. >> i'd like to know what -- [inaudible] my father told me to read newspapers. i'm a great reader of newspaper and in 1997 i saw a little clip in a paper that said john glenn was getting his second chance to go into space, this time aboard the shuttle, and about paragraph 8 it says and geri cobb is not too happy about that, and like most people, i said who's geri cobb, and i grew up in a space family. my father worked on the space program, and i thought i knew something about space, and especially project mercury, so it came as a great astonishment to me that i didn't know. so i began to find out. yes. >> how many women from mercury 123 are still around and how

many were you able to interview, and were they open to talking about it? >> they were open to talk about it and it was painful for them to relive it. of the 13, 11 are still alive and i met all of them, spoke wial the ones who passed away, i spoke to their family members. i think it's fairt for all of them, this experience was a very important center of their lives, so they were most eager to be able to tell the story, that they feel like much of it has been largely forgotten, but it was difficult for them to relive the disappointment. >> 1983 was the first time a woman went up. >> american woman, yes. >> sall e the, and i want to give you this hat.

>> what did the women do with their lives after the program ended? >> what did the women do with their lives afterwards? are we ok here? >> yes. >> all right. they went on to a variety of ve janie hart, who i mentioned in this last piece, shortly after she testi she got a call from a woman in new york that said we seem to be on the same wavelength here, and might you come up to a meeting in new york to talk about some of our mutual concerns, and that woman was betty freidan, and hart became

one of the founding board members of the national organization for women. two of them went on to become president of the 99's, the international organization of women pilots founded by amelia earhart. wally funk went on to be one of the first women investigators for the national transportation safety board. really extraordinary lives. >> yes. >> i'm interested in the congressional hearings, but a lot of our parents remember this in the early 1960's, but then it would seem to have been forgotten. why do you think this was such a forgotten episode? >> tha that's true, that it was well publicized in the with multiple page spreads in

"life" magazine and lots of press coverage, that i had the good fortune to read. but then after 1963, after russia, the story really did disappear, and i think that that has much to do with what might be regrettable american notions that unless, in this case, somebody succeeds in what they want to go, unless they go up into space, then it's really not a story, that in a sense nothing happened, so what is important about it. and i always think that that's a little bit like saying this little meeting that happened down the road in seneca false in 1848 when women got together to talk about the vote, that it really wasn't very important because nothing immediately happened from it. so i think it's a case that we can't see the way of history being paved. however, i should mention that eileen collins, who became the first woman to command the space shuttle in 1999, when i

was down with the 13 for that launch, she was quick to point out every chance she gets that her achievement was the result of their kicking in the door and that she stands on shoulders of these 13 incomparable pioneers. yes. >> i don't understand the reason for the -- [inaudible]. >> repeat the question. >> the first part of the question had to do with why was it secret and then, was johnson responsible in 1962 for su [inaudible] some pretty big folks walked in the door, i think. the reason it was secret is that even the project mercury men when they traveled to the

lovelace clinic, traveled under secrecy. sometimes even under assumed names. we didn't know how the tests would come out, didn't know how people would score, and i think it was lovelace who was head of nasa's life science committee at that time, i think it was his thought that it was best to test first, see how they did, and then announce results to the public, and i think particularly with geri cobb -- because he was really sticking his neck out, the med cal community was not sharing his belief that this was a woman who might be able to do as well as the men, so he wanted to first see how she would go. i would not say that it was johnson alone who put the end to thios this wonderful program. i think there were, like most things, many, many forces at work. certainly the most powerful being cultural attitudes towards women, particularly women in daring professions. even mine -- keep in mind, this was a time when many

people thought that women did not have the courage, did not have the brains, did not have the nerve to do something like this, so i think that was probably the most formidable goal that they met. after the meeting with johnson, the women still were not satisfied and again through lots of lobbying by jane hart, they pushed for congressional hearings on it to determine what the precise qualifications for astronauts should be, and it was then that congress decided that the status quo should be followed, that all astronauts should be pulled from the ranks of military jet test pilots, and at that time no women could be military jet test pilots, so it was a catch-22. yes. >> why did lovelace choose to test women in the first place? >> that's a good question as well. i think it began with sheer scientific curiosity. what would happen if begave the same medical tests we had

just given to the men, to women? how might they perform? i think he was initially fueled by just that sense of wonder and curiosity about it. lovelace was certainly a man who believed that women had equality in all aspects of life. lovelace was killed in a plane crash shortly after the congressional hearings. i was able to interview members of his family, including daughters, who told me wonderful stories about the encouragement that he gave them, so i think curiosity first and then just a fundamental belief in the equality of women. yes. >> did you encounter any opposition to your research, any people who wouldn't talk, any records you couldn't see? >> oh, sure. maybe i should leave it at that. >> you don't have to say names or anything. >> thank you very much.

i'll say yes. >> to follow up on that, though, what has been the response of nasa? >> that depends on exactly who at nasa you talk to, i guess. i did a great deal of research at the nasa history office in washington, d.c., and those folks couldn't be more forthcoming, wonderful archivists there. also, just in very recent years, nasa as part of their public web site have included a section on women in space that includes the mercury 13 as part of the steps that led to sally ride and ultimately to eileen collins. but the last time, i should preface that by saying the last time i was at the air and space museum, at the smithsonian, there were no public governmental exhibits acknowledging the merc 13, nor at cape canaveral. so within some pockets but not in others. yes. >> once the soviets put a woman in space, was there no

pressure from the american government to say well, we can do that too, it's not just -- the stereotype of the russian woman who's been steroided and training and all that. i would think there would have been a counter-revolution that would have pushed this program forward. >> that's an interesting point. no, there wasn't. in fact, some of the public comment from nasa and the government at that time was tereshkova was a publicity stunt, so they dismissed that achievement, and there wasn't, from people advocating women like the mercury 13, much of a response, i think largely as the next year or so went on, because of randi lovelace's death. so she was sort of dismissed, and it wasn't until the hard work of the feminist movement of the 1970's as well as the civil rights movement, that i think finally began to open

the doors in 1978 for the first class of women astronauts. >> did women astronauts in russia encounter the same obstacles? >> that first class? well, they were a small minority, certainly, among a larger group of women. interestingly, when i interviewed eileen collins, who was not part of that first class but who was a -- is a current astronaut, and talked to her, for example, about what kind of exams, what kind of physical and medical exams she took, she said the exams we have are nothing like the exams that these people went through, in part because our knowledge of space at that point in the early years was very minimal, so everything was tested. but as far as discrimination and obstacles, yes, i think that there certainly was some. there's an editorial cartoon in the book about sally ride where reporters are badgering her with questions that seem all too familiar.

can you make coffee up there, you're going to be scared, you know. that kind of thing. so the stereotypes persist. i think they persist even today. i mean, we have to keep in mind that the astronaut that these women see as the inheriter of their dreams is eileen collins. while they were thrilled when ride went up as a mission specialist, and it was not until 1999 that eileen collins became the first woman to command the space shuttle too, as the mercury 13 say, to drive the bus. so that is still a very, very long time, and collins is the only woman astronaut who is still trained as a commander, the only one after all these years. there's one more woman who's a pilot, which is nasa language for sort of copilot, but those are still pretty low figures. >> could i mention a mount

holyoke parallel i think i mentioned to you before. betty ryan, class of 1935 at mount holyoke. she became a pilot and e navy when the war broke out as a pilot, was naturally refused. she then spent the war in pensacola, teaching male pilots celestial navigation. >> that's a very good point. the mercury 13 were too young to participate in any way in the national effort in world war ii. too old to be part of sally ride's generation, they were squeezed right in the middle there. they looked to women like the mount holyoke alum that you mentioned as the shoulders that they stood on, particularly point to the wasp, the women air service pilots

of world war ii, as being the women who ferried the planes domestically and without their efforts, they think that they wouldn't have been able to start rattling that door a little bit. >> well, i think that just about does it. i'd like to thank you all once again for coming. it's been a real pleasure. thank you very much.