Space age: Wally Funk finally made it! -- July 22, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

I tried to resist the billionaires’ space race.

The space trips by Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson and Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos were exciting, but how rich people spend their money is only of passing interest to me.

I’m astonished anyone would bid $28 million for a 10-minute ride, even to outer space, as an unnamed individual did in Blue Origin’s auction. Even more astonishing, the winner canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. Really?

In that person’s place July 20 was the 18-year-old son of a real estate mogul in the Netherlands. The dad paid a lower, undisclosed sum for Oliver Daemen to become the world’s youngest space traveler. Teens I know are thrilled to get an old Honda. Really.

But then along came Wally.

Bezos, the world’s richest human, invited Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who trained to become an astronaut in the 1960s, as his “honored guest” on his historic space flight. Funk was the oldest person ever in space when she went up with Bezos, his brother Mark and Daemen in the New Shepard rocket, named for astronaut Alan Shepard.

How it is that most of us had never heard of Wally Funk but know way too much about Britney Spears is a conundrum of our modern age. Funk is exemplary, a model of patience, hard work, perseverance and grit.  

So, before we sink back into the morass of Covid statistics and dysfunction on Capitol Hill, let us savor the remarkable, inspirational life of Wally.   

Funk made her first attempt at flight about age 5, donning a Superman cape and “flying” off her daddy’s barn onto a bale of hay. She later made balsam wood airplanes and hung them in her bedroom, she said in an oral history interview.

In learning about Funk, I discovered she and I have something in common. We both attended Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. Stephens started an aviation program for women students in the 1940s. The Flying Susies was the first of its kind in the country. The college ended the program in the early 1960s, before I arrived.

Funk went to Stephens in 1956, earning her pilot’s license at age 17. At that time, Stephens was a two-year “girls school,” and Funk transferred in 1958 to Oklahoma State University, which had a robust aviation program.

In 1961, three years before Bezos was born, Funk volunteered for the Mercury 13 program, a privately funded program aimed at testing whether women could be astronauts. At 21, she was the youngest of the 13 women selected. They called themselves the FLATs – First Lady Astronaut Trainees.

Through dozens of punishing physical and psychological tests, the FLATs were found to be just as qualified, if not more so, than the men training for Project Mercury. Funk endured 10 hours and 35 minutes inside a sensory deprivation tank – longer than anyone else. But the women were not allowed into space.

Then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote, “Let’s stop this now!” on a letter about women astronauts, and in 1962, the FLATs received telegrams saying their training had been canceled.

Funk applied to NASA four times to become an astronaut and was rejected each time. At one point, she was told she didn’t qualify because she lacked an engineering degree and would need to have one in nine months, which was impossible.

She racked up other firsts: first woman Federal Aviation Administration inspector and the first woman air safety investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board. She kept flying, logging more than 19,600 flying hours. She has taught more than 3,000 people to fly.

And she kept her dream alive. In 2012, Funk used her savings to buy a $200,000 ticket for one of Branson’s future spaceflights. Then Bezos asked her to come along for free. A little one-upsmanship there?

After the 10-minute flight, Funk emerged from the capsule grinning, her arms spread wide, as though embracing the world.

“I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer,” she said. They had four minutes of weightlessness.

“I want to thank you, sweetheart,” Funk said to Bezos. “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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What's your grade for 2014? -- Dec. 23, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

To hear President Barack Obama, 2014 has been a heckuva year.

“Pick any metric you want: America’s resurgence is real,” the president declared at his year-end news conference.

In case you missed it: Over the last 57 months, businesses have created nearly 11 million new jobs, most of them full-time. Wages are rising. America is the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Gas is 70 cents a gallon lower than last Christmas. Ten million Americans have gained health insurance this year, the president said.

“Meanwhile, around the world, America is leading,” he said. We lead the coalition to destroy ISIL, the international fight to check Russian aggression in the Ukraine, the global fight against Ebola in West Africa and efforts to combat climate change. Our combat mission in Afghanistan is nearly over, he said, thanking the troops and their families.

“There is no doubt that we can enter into the New Year with renewed confidence that America is making significant strides where it counts,” Obama said.

Sounds good, but when I asked a few people to grade 2014, they looked pained.

One said “fast,” as in the year flew by. Others reluctantly gave the year a C or just shrugged. I agree that 2014 deserves a C – not the worst of years, certainly not the best – but we may be easy graders.

Several polls this month have found between 64 and 69 percent of Americans still think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Seven in 10 people say the next president should govern differently than Obama, putting Obama in George W. Bush territory near the end of Bush’s second term, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek likens what has happened to Obama to what befell President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960s.

LBJ won the 1964 presidential election by one of the largest landslides in history and pushed landmark, controversial measures through Congress, including Medicare and Medicaid, civil rights and voting rights laws. Obama won decisively in 2008 and pushed through the Affordable Care Act.

“This is not to suggest that history is repeating itself. There are too many differences between Johnson and Obama — both the men and their presidencies — to argue that,” Dallek wrote in an online essay for Reuters in October. “Yet, as Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

After both presidents achieved progressive change, they lost public support. The war in Vietnam ruined LBJ’s credibility and stopped his domestic agenda. Obama has been blocked by a combination of foreign and domestic developments. His popularity has tanked.

But historians may view Obama differently than people do today, says Dallek, one of the historians who have had several dinners with the president.

“It is doubtful that Obama will end up with as poor a reputation as Johnson,” the historian writes. A recent ranking of public approval of the last 10 presidents placed Johnson third from the bottom, above only Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush.

“Historians will likely credit the Obama administration with more advances toward a more humane society,” says Dallek, citing the Affordable Care Act, equal rights for women, equal treatment for gays and lesbians and sympathetic treatment for “Dreamers,” children brought illegally to the United States by their parents.

As Obama thinks about his place in history, he is signaling that he hasn’t given up on the present. His December surprise announcement to start normalizing relations with Cuba shows he wants to remain relevant. 

He acknowledges there is plenty of work left to do and says he’s energized and excited about what he calls his presidency’s fourth quarter. He also claims he wants to work with Republicans.

But as the GOP takes control of Congress with what they believe is a mandate to roll back Obama’s policies, the president is staking out a confrontational game plan.

“I intend to continue to do what I’ve been doing,” Obama said of his use of executive actions, which many in the GOP consider unconstitutional.

Partisan battles, standoffs, vetoes and more disappointment surely lie ahead. By this time next year, 2015 may be lucky to get a C.   

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

A march to renew the dream of equality -- Aug. 15, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At the rally on Aug. 28 commemorating the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, President Barack Obama will do something President John F. Kennedy declined to do 50 years ago. He will speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

For the first black president to speak from the spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech illustrates how much society has changed for the better in half a century. But it’s not the end of the journey. Obama’s remarks likely will point to how far we still need to go, especially to achieve economic equality.   

The march galvanized the nation behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, but despite the spectacular success of some individuals, overall economic progress for blacks has been slower.

The poverty rate for blacks is three times that of whites, the black unemployment rate is nearly twice that of whites, and, nearly 60 years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, most schools remain racially segregated, reports  the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on the economic condition of low- and middle-income  Americans.   

The anniversary of the march gives us a window on a sad and turbulent time that many Americans don’t recall. Obama was only 2 in 1963. Time has dimmed the memories of many who are old enough to remember the benighted South of segregated movie theaters and waiting rooms and “whites-only” lunch counters and motels.

Huge demonstrations on the National Mall are routine these days, but Washington had never seen a mass gathering of black protesters. Kennedy tried to persuade organizers to cancel it because he was afraid it would turn violent and that would provoke a backlash in Congress, dooming his civil rights bill.

Television news that spring and summer had shown Americans a horrifying picture of their country. Fire hoses, night sticks and attack dogs were turned against nonviolent citizens protesting discrimination. On June 11, National Guard troops were required to escort two black students to the University of Alabama where a defiant Gov. George Wallace reluctantly stepped aside. That same afternoon, King sent a telegram to Kennedy urging him to do something about police brutality against protesters in Danville, Va.

"The Negro’s endurance may be at a breaking point,” King wrote.

That night, Kennedy made a televised address from the Oval Office. He called civil rights a moral issue.

"The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated,” the president said.

A few hours later, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Miss.

Leading up to the march, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought to minimize potential problems by negotiating how it would be conducted. To reduce crowds, the march would be on a Wednesday. Bars and liquor stores were closed, the Washington Senators baseball game canceled and federal workers could stay home. The rally would end by 4 p.m. so protesters could leave town by dusk.

On the Sunday before the 1963 march, NBC’s “Meet the Press” featured Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, and King, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Many questions centered on whether the march would be peaceful. Yes, said Wilkins and King, yes.

During the Cold War, the threat of Communism loomed large, and the journalists  asked about Bayard Rustin, the march’s chief organizer, who had been a member of the Young Communist League. He has changed, the leaders insisted.

The radical Rustin, who was also a gay activist, is finally being recognized for his role in orchestrating the peaceful march. Obama will give Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously later this year. It’s the country’s highest honor given to civilians.

Kennedy reportedly declined to speak at the march because he thought it impossible to write a speech that would please both the marchers and the nationwide TV audience. The president met with march leaders at the White House immediately afterward. He praised their deep fervor and quiet dignity, and he promised to work toward civil rights, full employment and to eliminate discrimination in employment, education and housing.  

As Kennedy and then President Lyndon B. Johnson took the lead on civil rights, it’s now Obama’s turn to take the lead on moving the country closer to economic equality.     

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.