Wally Schirra: In Memoriam

“The Schirras had brought a solid marriage to the [Project Mercury] astronaut squadron, with an absolutely equal balance between husband and wife. Beneath Wally’s famous “Gotcha!” good humor was a perceptive and confident man. Well-read and opinionated, he was comfortable with serious conversation. He also was forever fighting weight gain and an addiction to cigarettes. With his voice always rumbling on the brink of a chuckle, he was one of the Navy’s best storytellers, cheerfully obliging when friends or wife coaxed him to end an evening with one of his gems.

“His wife, Jo, was tall and elegant, beautifully dressed and blessed with common sense. The daughter of a high-ranking naval officer, she kept on conscientious eye open, always, for her friends and the good of the group. No one appreciated her deadpan humor more than Wally, who guffawed with delight when he was her target. She spared few. ‘This must be a good party,’ she said, pondering her cocktail, ‘Al is laughing.’ At one raucous Cocoa Beach party, she and Rene watched with fascination the slow, giggling, drunken progression of one well-known groupie on her hands and knees, crawling toward her favorite astronaut—underneath the banquet tables. ‘Do you think her nylons will make it?’ Jo wondered aloud.”

—from Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever, For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut, p. 241

Somewhere up there, right about now,
Wally is asking the angels not to sing “Yellow Bird.”