QUARANTINE BLOG # 369

April 3, 2021

Janey Hart, one of the Mercury 13, dialed her good friend Liz Carpenter, personal secretary to Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Carpenter arranged an interview for Hart and Jerrie Cobb. She urged the Vice President to give the women some encouragement and drafted a letter to NASA’s James Webb for Johnson’s signature. Her recommendations to Johnson were clear: hear the women’s petition, show them the letter to James Webb, and offer them some support.

Johnson listened and said as much as he would like to help the cause of women astronauts, but the question just was not up to him to address.

Cobb and Hart never saw the letter to James Webb that Liz Carpenter had drafted. Johnson decided not to show it to them because he had no intention of signing it. After the women left, Johnson scribbled forcefully across the bottom of the page: “Lets Stop This Now!”

The House Committee on Science and Astronautics agreed to three days of hearings investigate alleged government discrimination against women in the nation’s space program. 

Only Cobb and Janey Hart would be permitted to speak for the Mercury 13. For NASA, the witnesses were project director George Low and John Glenn. 

On July 17, 1962, it had been almost three years since Jerrie Cobb had met Don Flickinger and Randy Lovelace on the beach in Miami and heard of their interest in testing a woman pilot for astronaut viability. Even though she met resistance from NASA and Vice President Johnson, Cobb believed that over the next three days she would be able to make her case.

Cobb told the committee the testing program had used no taxpayers’ money. She described how she and the Mercury 13 had become involved. Cobb concluded, “We seek only a place in our Nation’s space future without discrimination. We ask as citizens of this Nation to be allowed to participate with seriousness and sincerity in the making of history now ... We offer you thirteen women pilot volunteers.”

John Glenn was asked, Would you support a program to train women astronauts? “I wouldn’t oppose it,” Glenn replied, but then he added, “I see no requirement for it.” That remark was virtually the nail in the coffin.

In October, 1962, the House Committee on Science and Astronautics concluded that “some time in the future consideration should be given to inaugurating a program of research to determine the advantages to be gained by utilizing women as astronauts.”

As far as NASA was concerned, the case of women in space was closed.

On June 16, 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, age 26, became the first woman in space. Hoping that James Webb at least might be chagrined to see another space record go to the Russians, Jerrie Cobb formally applied to the NASA astronaut training program a few weeks later. NASA rejected her application outright, stating that it had come in after the deadline and would not be considered. 

Jerrie Cobb immersed herself in religion. She served for 30 years with the Wycliffe Bible translators. Flying high above the Amazon on July 20, 1969, Cobb heard the news over the plane’s radio that Neil Armstrong had set foot on the moon. “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” 

Other than the blurry image from the TV camera, the only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon is this one. Armstrong is reflected in the face plate of Buzz Aldrin's space suit.

In 1978, NASA selected thirty-five new astronauts from a pool of 8,079 applicants. They included NASA’s first African-American, Asian-American, and six women astronauts. Selected as NASA’s first women astronauts were Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith Resnik, Sally Ride, Margaret Seddon, and Kathryn Sullivan. 

Sally Ride was the one who would make space history. When she lifted off the launch pad on June 18, 1983 – 20 years and 2 days after Valentina Tereshkova – she became the first American woman in space. 

In 1998, President Bill Clinton announced that NASA had selected Eileen Collins to become the first woman to command the shuttle. A 42-year-old Air Force lieutenant colonel, Collins slid into the left seat for her history-making flight in July 1999. 

On the ground at Cape Canaveral, watching the liftoff of the space shuttle Columbia, were Jerrie Cobb, Janey Hart, Wally Funk, Jerri Sloan Truhill, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Irene Leverton, B Steadman, and Rhea Hurrle Woltman. Collins had invited the surviving Mercury 13 women to be her personal guests at blastoff. 

Sarah Gorelick, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Sloan, Irene Leverton, Rhea Hurrle, B Steadman.

She wanted them to share in the celebration because she genuinely believed the day also belonged to them. Without the Mercury 13, she declared, the country would not be celebrating women astronauts and the first female shuttle commander.

We close this story with a large bit of irony. In July, 1962, John Glenn, recently returned from a three orbit mission aboard Freedom 7 said of the effort to put women into the astronaut corps, “I wouldn’t oppose it, [but] I see no requirement for it.” On October 29, 1998, 77-year-old John Glenn went into space for a second time, serving as a mission specialist aboard Discovery. NASA said that Glenn had conducted scientific experiments on the effects of aging. 

Some said Glenn’s return to orbit was publicity stunt. Not long after “Send Jerrie into Space” became a grassroots campaign, with support coming from school children, the National Organization for Women, women’s groups across the country, U.S. senators, and First Lady Hillary Clinton. NASA, however, had not changed its mind. “Jerrie Cobb is a remarkable pilot,” NASA said, “but we have no plans to launch her into space.”

Reflecting on the events of 1962 and the outcome of the Mercury 13, it was stated by astronaut Scott Carpenter that “NASA never had any intention of putting those women in space. The whole idea was foisted upon it, and it was happy to have the research data, but those women were before their time.”

Next week, the long delayed “Museum Mosaic.”

👉  The Greatest Prayer Ever Prayed.

Today is the last day of Lent, the last day of preparation before the greatest celebration the world has ever known, and to close these Lenten meditations let’s start with Psalm 40:6-8:

“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.  Then I said, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me.  I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.”

This Psalm is identified as one written by David, and the writer of Hebrews shows us David was looking ahead to the Lord Jesus:

“Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.  In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.  Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come – in the volume of the book it is written of Me – to do Your will, O God.’” (Hebrews 10:5-7 NKJV).

With that understanding, let us look at the greatest prayer ever prayed to which the answer was, “No.”

Judas left the upper room early to find the Jewish officials into whose hands he would betray Jesus.  Now the remaining 11 disciples have gone with Jesus into Gethsemane, an olive grove, to pray.  They have just finished a strange supper in which he told them that the Passover elements represent his body, broken for them, and his blood, shed for them.  

Jesus leaves 8 at the opening of the garden, and takes Peter, James, and John 20 to 30 feet farther inside, and asks them to pray with him.  You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t cross the bridge before you come to it.”  Jesus is about to cross that bridge, and he asks his disciples to pray with him.  You’ve heard about “sweating it out in advance.”  It’s origin is in this drama in Gethsemane.

Then Jesus goes a little farther still, falls on his face and prays, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).  In other words Jesus, God the Son, is asking God the Father, “Don’t let me go to the cross if there’s any way to avoid it.”

In that moment he has a foretaste of what tomorrow will bring, when he will be nailed to the cross, and all of the burden of sin for the whole world will be placed on him.  And with that foretaste he prays the same prayer three times.  Why did he pray three times?  Because the first time the answer was, “No.”  And the second time the answer was, “No.”  And hoping for a different answer, he prays the third time, and the third time the answer is still, “No.”

Three times he goes to see if his disciples are praying, and three times he finds them – all 11 – asleep.  So how do we know what he prayed?  Because Jesus told them.  If you are tempted to doubt the story, remember its only possible source – Jesus told them.

There is a wonderful report in Luke’s parallel account: “Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him” (22:43).  The personal beauty of that verse is, when we pray a prayer poured out from the depths of our hearts and the answer is “No,” the Lord God Almighty will provide the strength and the grace, and if necessary, the hand of an angel to help us bear the “No.”

Jesus, of whom the writer of Hebrews said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God,” bore the “No,” and went to the cross, and suffered, and died for my sins.  And for yours.  And for the sins the whole world.

An Indian missionary, Sadhu Sundar Singh, wrote a hymn that was made popular by the Billy Graham Crusades, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.”  It is not about the ease of making a decision, but about the staggering cost of picking up your cross and following the Jesus.  Those sleepy disciples would experience the weakness of the flesh, but they were restored to strength of faith.  The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.  If you say your spirit is willing, praise God!  If your flesh is weak, recognize the truth, and before you come to the bridge, sweat it out, and settle everything in prayer.  

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