Faith 7: L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., and the Final Mercury Mission (Springer Praxis Books)

Description

This book celebrates the final spaceflight in the Mercury series, flown by NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, who led an adventurous life in the cockpit of airplanes and spacecraft alike, and on his Mercury mission he became the last American ever to rocket into space alone. He flew in the Mercury and Gemini programs and served as head of flight crew operations in both the Apollo and Skylab programs. Based on extensive research and first-person interviews, this is a complete history of the Faith 7 flight and its astronaut. Cooper later gained notoriety following the release of the movie, The Right Stuff , in which he was depicted by Dennis Quaid, but Burgess discovers there was even more drama to his story. It completes the "Pioneers in Early Spaceflight" subseries in fitting fashion. Review: Catch the feeling of Excitement, Pride and Wonder! - Reading the book now. It is so far very well written and keeps your attention. I grew up in Hampton and still live in that area. My Dad worked at NASA for 44 years, beginning with NACA. He worked with all of the original seven astronauts on a daily basis. He had no college degree but took a Civil Service type of exam and was accredited as an Aerospace Engineer. Ultimately he was interviewed by Walter Cronkite and Jules Bergman on national TV. I well remember being in Cocoa Beach for numerous launches, the last of which was the Viking Mars lander and orbiter project in 1975. It was an exciting time and reading the book I am beginning to "catch" that feeling of pride, excitement and wonder that everyone involved in those early years felt. BTW Dad's picture is on page 98 explaining the blinking beacon experiment. Review: Research is Flawed - Because he's a "local boy" I grab up every book on Cooper and looked forward to this one, written from a bit of a different angle than most of those before. I assumed it would be accurate in at least easily researched details. Maybe because the author said he "knew" Cooper he didn't think it was necessary to research his early life in detail. It was nice to read about people and places I know (we were born in the same hospital and went to the same schools, my dad was best friends with Jack Vandeveer and Haylor Fisher). Evidently the author had access to the family scrapbook for some of the photos and details of his early life. So . . . why, on page 8 does he say Cooper went to school in Murray, Kentucky, his junior year then "returned" to graduate from Shawnee High School. That's false. Cooper's dad was called back into the army during Gorden's SENIOR year and he didn't graduate with his class at SHS but at Murray H.S. His classmates, including the aforementioned, always included him as a classmate in their reunions, etc. because he went to school with them all the way from Jefferson Grade School, Central Junior High and almost all of high school. Oh, and although Cooper did play football he was not the starting halfback nor did the Wolves play for the state championship and there's no record that he was offered a scholarship to what was then Ok A & M (now Ok State), especially since the family had then moved to Kentucky. One has to be curious about the author's description of Teen Town, on page 10 calling it a place for underprivileged kids. That building was erected in the '30s by the NYA as a sewing and cooking training for local girls. It was closed down with the onset of the war like the other government programs and in 1943 was obtained by the YMCA as a teen "hangout," first known as the Wolves Den and later designated Teen Town. Junior High kids went Friday night and high school kids on Saturday night to listen to music, buy cokes, dance, etc. (I know, I went). And one more "glaring error" that could have been easily determined . . . Cooper made TWO trips back for parades in Shawnee, one before he went into space with his wife and daughters to dedicate the local army reserve building in his dad's name then another after he made his space flight. "Cooper Day" was Aug 11, 1962 and then a huge, nationally-covered parade, May 16, 1963. Photographs with his wife in the car were from the first parade, when he's shown alone it was the second. Also, look for the different ties he's wearing. Old timers in Pottawatomie County are well-aware of this and it would have been easy to verify. So . . . one has to wonder . . . how much actual research went into the rest of the book?