The Fight Over Gus's Spacesuit

Think that today's kids aren't involved, or learning anything in high school? Don't say that to 15-year-old Amanda Meyer -- she might be the best hope of resolving the ongoing battle over a true piece of history from the earliest days of the United States space program.

The high school sophomore from Madison, CT has been waging a letter-writing, phone and Internet campaign to convince federal officials to give back Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom's Mercury spacesuit to his family, ever since she first learned about the late astronaut while researching a school project on heroism in February.

"I'm going to keep working until the suit is handed over," said Meyer. "No matter who ‘owns’ the suit, NASA should do right by the Grissom family and let the suit be displayed where they want it displayed."

Meyer is meeting on Monday with Dan LeBlanc, chief executive officer of the company that oversees the operation of the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, FL, where the suit is currently displayed. Meyer will try to convince LeBlanc to allow the family to display the suit in the Gus Grissom Memorial Museum, near the astronaut's birthplace in Mitchell, IN.

Calling Meyer "a wonderful lesson in activism," LeBlanc is not sure if he'll be able to help. "I’m not sure there’s much I can do for her," he told reporters, noting that he is a NASA contractor, not a NASA official.

He added that the Hall of Fame is "so very proud" to have Grissom's suit on display. It is the only flight suit in their collection.

The spacesuit in question was worn by Grissom on his suborbital Liberty Bell 7 flight in 1961. It was America's second flight into space, preceding John Glenn's first orbital flight later that year. The suit has been at the Astronaut Hall of Fame since it was donated by Grissom's family to the then-privately funded museum in 1990. Before that it hung in a clothes closet, after being rescued from the scrap heap in 1961, according to the family.

The tug-of-war between NASA and Grissom's family began in 2002, when the Astronaut Hall of Fame was taken over by a NASA contractor. The family then asked for the items they had donated to be returned. They got back Grissom's watch, cowboy hat, a patch and a US flag -- but NASA refused to return the spacesuit.

"They are just a bunch of thieves," said Betty Grissom, 78, the astronaut's widow.

According to NASA, the astronaut signed out the suit -- considered to be property of the space agency -- in 1965 to take to a show-and-tell for his children. NASA maintains that Grissom never brought it back, and that they have simply reclaimed lost property.

Gus Grissom died in the Apollo 1 launchpad fire on Jan. 27, 1967, after also having flown in the United State's first two-man space capsule, Gemini 3, in 1965.

Grissom's Mercury flight ending infamously when the Liberty Bell 7 capsule began taking on water after splashdown. Grissom fought public allegations for years that he had panicked and blown out the hatch prematurely, although a NASA probe cleared Grissom of any error.

In a tongue-and-cheek reference to the Mercury debacle, Grissom later christened his Gemini capsule "Molly Brown," after the "unsinkable" title character in a Broadway show.

FMI: www.freewebs.com/mercury7savethesuit, www.kennedyspacecenter.com