Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [114]
We had been married in February, and were scheduled to go to Greece in July 1988, but on the day we were to leave, I fell into a slump and lost all interest and enthusiasm in going. Why am I writing this book? I thought. NASA’s shuttle fleet had been grounded for over two years since the Challenger accident, and our space program was at a low point. Perhaps the public would not be interested in looking back at the story of Apollo and how we won the space race, so why bother? Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to go. The taxi was literally sitting out in front of our house, waiting to take us to the airport, and I decided that I was not going to get off the couch. Lois was adamant. “Buzz, we are going to Greece!”
I sat staring straight ahead.
“Buzz Aldrin,” she said, putting her cute little nose right in front of mine, “you get off that couch right now. Let’s go!” Lois literally pulled me off the couch, and started dragging me across the floor, but I refused to budge.
“Buzz, if you don’t get up, I’m going to go get the taxi driver and have him carry you into the car! We are going to Greece!” This prospect got me up.
So we went to Greece, and had a marvelous time. Malcolm had arranged for us to rent a small apartment near his home, and each day I walked down the colorful village streets to work with him. During our time there, Lois and I visited the Lindos Acropolis. Looking at that structure and recalling the mythology that so epitomized Greek culture, I could envision how modern-day technology had a strange way of fulfilling the “myths” of the people who preceded us. Maybe someday my so-called “fantasies” about space exploration to the stars will be commonplace.
One day, as Lois and I were walking hand in hand down a nearly deserted street, we saw a man approaching us. As he passed, I called out, “Is that you, Walter?” The man turned around, and sure enough, it was Walter Cronkite! Of all places in the world to run into the CBS Evening News anchorman, who, with one heartfelt wipe of a tear from his eye before a whole nation, sent us on our way that morning as we lifted off on the great Saturn V on our journey to the moon nearly twenty years earlier.
IN DECEMBER 1988, Federal regulators clamped down on savings and loan institutions throughout the country, including Western Savings & Loan. The company was working hard to meet new regulatory capital requirements amidst a severe downturn in the Arizona real estate market. Lois’s father, Douglas Driggs, founder of Western in 1929, and her brothers, Gary Driggs, serving as president and CEO, and John Driggs, the chairman of the board, had built the family business into one of the most successful savings and loans in the country. Western had survived the Great Depression and prior savings and loan crises in the 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s, and prided itself on serving the Arizona community’s mortgage needs. The Driggs family felt strongly that Western could survive the current crisis as well, but efforts to secure a rescue package and recapitalization did not pan out. Ultimately, in the late 1980s, they could not avert the failure of virtually the entire Arizona savings and loan industry, regardless of the management strategy of the individual institutions. As part of the colossal savings-and-loan debacle throughout the United States at that time, the government seized Western Savings on June 14, 1989, rendering its stock valueless to the bank’s shareholders. Unlike the multibillion-dollar bailouts of 2008 to save the investment, banking, and financial institutions of America, in 1989 there was no such bailout, and the entire savings-and-loan industry disappeared.
Overnight, all of Lois’s family’s resources were gone. Not merely