Introduction Tape recording of the ladies luncheon held in honor of Mrs. David Scott on Wednesday, September the 27th, Dallas, Texas. This luncheon was attended by the wives of the doctors attending the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology Convention. The next voice you will hear will be that of Mrs. David Scott.

Lurton Scott: Thank you very much Mrs. Maxwell. It really is a pleasure to be here with you today. I would… I’m sure each of you have bid your husbands farewell as they go off to conventions and speeches and the like, many times, and I do this quite frequently.

Lurton Scott: But it’s kind of unique, today, my husband’s home babysitting and I’m here speaking. But it really is kind of a unique situation. But my reason for being here today goes back to another Texas town, San Antonio, 30 years ago, hate to admit it was that long ago, but it was when I had my tonsils out and a certain doctor took them out and that was the beginning of a very long friendship, a very wonderful friendship.

Lurton Scott: And so I have Dotty and Mike Koss to thank for my being here today. I’d also like to thank my husband because I guess if he hadn’t gone to the moon, y’all probably wouldn’t have invited me here. [laughter] Lurton Scott: I think the question that I’m asked the most is, what was it like to have your husband fly in space or go to the moon and what did you do all that time or what did you think about? And I have to admit, it’s the hardest question to answer. It’s not a one or two word answer. It’s something that I guess I really have to go all the way back to when I first met my husband. Lurton Scott: And he was a pilot, and I think probably a lot of women would, or young girls would’ve thought, “Oh gee, I don’t know whether I’d want my husband flying airplanes.” Well, I was very fortunate. My father was a pilot, so this never bothered me. Flying airplanes was something I had grown up with and I really never stopped to think about it. So marrying a pilot was a very natural thing. Now, if someone had told me that 13 years later he was going to go to the moon, I might have thought twice. Lurton Scott: Unfortunately no one told me that. So we were married and we moved to Europe as Mrs. Maxwell said, and it was a two year honeymoon. We really did have a wonderful time in Europe, and he flew airplanes and loved it. But he decided that really you can’t fly airplanes all your life. So he went back to graduate school at MIT.

Lurton Scott: And got a graduate degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. And it was this two-year period when we were in Boston that Alan Shepard, who many of you heard speak, I believe Sunday, made his first flight. And I can remember sitting there, my heart pounding, absolutely positive that thing is going to explode, you know. I couldn’t imagine anyone getting on top of it. Lurton Scott: And people would say to me, “Well, gee, your husband’s in astronautics, maybe he’ll be an astronaut someday.” And I said, “Oh no, he’s going to help design these things. He’s not going to ever fly them.” And I don’t know whether I was not being realistic with myself because I should have seen this pattern coming along. He was a pilot and then he went back to school and got a degree in aeronautics and astronautics. And then from there he went to the test pilot school, which was putting practical application into his technical training, but I still never really thought about it. And one day he came home and a selection was going to be made for another group of astronauts, and he wanted to know what I thought about his applying.

Lurton Scott: And I kind of took a deep breath and thought, well, gee, I don’t know. It scares me to death. But I was very proud of him and the fact that he was qualified to apply and slightly prejudiced, but I thought he was very talented and I knew he’d do a wonderful job. And I thought, well, I don’t know. So I said, “Well, you do whatever you want to do. If you’re happy, I’ll be happy.” So he applied [laughter], and eight and a half years ago, we ended up moving to Houston.

Lurton Scott: And that was the beginning of a very slow transition. And the first two years he was gone all the time. Well, for the last eight years he’s been gone probably four to five days out of every seven. And this was difficult with two young children, but you learn to adjust to that. And it was nice having him home every weekend. You really look forward to your weekends. Lurton Scott: So I learned to adjust to that, but I still really don’t think I ever cared if he flew. I thought it was nice that he could work on the program and contribute something, but I still didn’t think in terms of actually having him fly that spacecraft. And the spring of ’65 when the Gemini program became active, he suggested that I go down and watch a launch. So I went down to Cape Kennedy for Gemini 3, and I guess that was the turning point in my feelings about the space program as far as having him fly a spacecraft. Lurton Scott: It is the most exciting thing in the world to see a launch. Watching it on television is an advantage, but you can put your hand out and blot out the picture. So you really cannot get the feeling of the magnitude of this thing. It’s really, really exciting. And once I saw this, I really wanted him to climb that. That just did it. And I think… I wish every one of you could share this because it is your program and it’s this country’s program and it’s something that really is a thrill. Lurton Scott: But, I think another thing too, over the years, and starting with Gemini 3, David began to talk more and more about actually flying a flight. And in fact, it was just three months later when he was selected for a crew. But he has a tremendous facility for being able to explain a very technical subject in a way that anyone can understand it. Even our children, I feel they have always understood and enjoyed what he did because he’ll sit down and explain it to you. And of course, this has made it much easier for me. Lurton Scott: And his first flight, which was Gemini 8 in March of ’66 was very, very exciting. And oh, I was thrilled. And I think really the only thing that worried me was the fact that he might slip and break something and wouldn’t be able to go. And then oh Lord, I could never live with him. [laughter] Lurton Scott: Fortunately he didn’t, and it was an exciting flight. However, it was a disappointment to him in the sense that he had trained for an EVA, which is an extra vehicular activity he was to have on the outside the spacecraft, and they did have a problem on their flight and they had to make an emergency landing just 10 hours after lift-off. So he was really very disappointed. Lurton Scott: And I found on his second flight, which was Apollo 9 in the spring of ’69, that I was much more nervous and not from a safety point of view, but I had seen this tremendous disappointment that he had when he had trained so hard and just put his whole life into learning and doing something and then didn’t have the opportunity to do it. And it’s the type thing, you don’t have many chances. Lurton Scott: So I found myself really much more nervous that maybe he’d get up there and it was to be the first docking of the LM and the command module. It was just in earth orbit, but they had to have it work or they couldn’t go to the moon on the later flight. So it was really a very exciting flight and everything went beautifully and all my worries were for naught. Lurton Scott: So when it came time for Apollo 15 last summer, this had sort of settled out some of my fears. Everything had gone so well on 9, and I did — I think the thing that really made Apollo 15 so wonderful for me was having the television camera on the moon. I really had the feeling that I was sharing something that he had worked seven and a half years for. And I had the opportunity to watch him do it. And there’s no way I can tell you how I felt because words won’t express it. Lurton Scott: And I had hoped to bring the film of Apollo 15 with me today, but the room was just too crowded and we couldn’t show it. But I want to invite each and every one of you to come to Houston and we’ll give you a great tour at the Manned Spacecraft Center and show you some very interesting films, some wonderful films, and I hope you can get there some- someday. Lurton Scott: As far as my personal life, I think too, another question that people frequently ask me is what a effects has this had on your children and on your normal everyday life, you must lead such an exciting life. Well, it’s a very up and down life. I like to think that I’m just an average housewife. And I think in most respects, I am. Lurton Scott: I have two children, and every one of you that are mothers know that two active children keep you very busy. And they do. They keep me very busy. And I find that with a husband that’s gone a great deal, I enjoy staying home with them. I think they need one of us there with them. So that’s why [inaudible] home. Lurton Scott: But I think the reason, the children have managed to keep a fairly well balanced attitude about what their daddy does. I mean, any child is very proud of what their father does, but they don’t remember anything else, you know. To me, I always grew up saying my life’s as crazy as going to the moon. In fact, I still start to say that every now and again, and I think I shouldn’t say that, but the children don’t feel that way. Lurton Scott: They were 4 and 2 when David flew on Gemini 8, and they really just have accepted this. Their daddy goes to the moon. In fact, Tracy came home one day, she had a new friend at school and she said, “Guess what her daddy does?” And I thought, “My gosh, I can’t imagine.” [laughter] She said, “He flies airplanes to Paris.” [laughter] Well, that’s very interesting. And I thought, “Well, I’m glad that really impressed her.”

Lurton Scott: Then Doug made another interesting remark, which I think all you being doctors would appreciate, on Apollo 15 last summer. You never know what goes through children’s minds. And it was the day before splash down, I was, the night before I was putting Doug to bed that night, he said, “Mommy, how are we going to know if Daddy has any moon germs?” And I said, “Oh, well, the first three flights, they were quarantined.” And I explained what that meant. They were kept in a little trailer in a special room and that they were checked and kept three weeks to make sure that they didn’t have any germs. Lurton Scott: He thought about that a minute and he said, “Oh, but mommy, they could be teeny, teeny tiny.” And he said, “And they might bite it pretty hard.” [laughter] It was really interesting. I kept thinking, I hope that nothing happens in the first few days he’s home. If anything bites, Doug is going to [inaudible]. Lurton Scott: But fortunately nothing did. And since Apollo 15, I suppose, well, starting back after his first flight, we have had some tremendous experiences. And this is the part of my life that is certainly not that of a normal housewife. We’ve shared in a part of history that is really exciting [the lunar space program]. And I get excited about it. Hope you all do too. It really is a tremendous program. Lurton Scott: We’ve had an opportunity to travel. We’ve been to the Paris Air Show in ’67 and ’69. In 1970, we went to Panama as President Nixon’s personal representatives to the opening of the Regional Olympics down there. And that was a very exciting trip. We’ve had two of the Russian cosmonauts to dinner in our home. We entertained the British ambassador for lunch one day, which really threw me [laughter] trying to get lunch ready for the ambassador. Lurton Scott: We’ve been entertained by the Lindsay’s in New York and the Daly’s from Chicago, my husband’s addressed a joint session of Congress. We’ve been to dinner at the White House. We’ve spent a weekend at Camp David. We’ve traveled to England and Sweden and Germany and Italy, France, and Poland and Yugoslavia. In fact, we’re leaving next Sunday for Paris to accept an award over there. Lurton Scott: So on days when I’m home scrubbing the floor [laughter], thinking back to all this excitement, and it really isn’t that of a normal housewife, but I tell you, it makes you appreciate home. You really enjoy the traveling. But when you can go home and relax with your children and your family and your friends, it means an awful lot. And you, you really learn the important things in life, even though you do have these opportunities. Lurton Scott: And I think all of this has taught me several things. One of which is that when I was back in St. Mary’s Hall, many years ago, it seems many years ago, it made me nervous speaking in front of 17 girls in a class. And if someone had told me then that I would speak in front of a room for doctor’s wives, I would’ve been so nervous. I thought, oh, I really couldn’t do that. But you learned to accept that you have to learn. Lurton Scott: And if your husband came home and said, “Tomorrow I’m going to the moon.” It would be a shattering experience, but my husband didn’t just come home and tell me this one day. It’s something that came about gradually. And you do, you learn to accept things and you learn to enjoy them.

Lurton Scott: And sometimes when I get a little frustrated, because I feel that I know what a tremendous program this is, and I just wish everyone could appreciate it. I look back in history and I think, “Gee when Columbus discovered America, really no one appreciated what was happening.” And I think this is true in many great discoveries. It takes years sometimes before you really appreciate what has happened. Lurton Scott: And then I guess really the most important thing, is that I’ve learned that you have to look toward the future. That if you- [tape cuts off]