Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [119]
When she finally consented to give it another try, we were on a Sea Space Symposium dive off the Mexican coast of Baja, California, in which the guys were off on one dive and the women were on a supposedly tamer version of it. Lois, in her zebra-striped wetsuit, was trying desperately to follow the directions of the divemaster in the heavy seas. They dropped a rope line to the bottom as the women made their way down to where they were going to begin exploring underwater. As Lois and the women were waiting at the bottom, they suddenly saw a school of about ten hammerhead sharks passing by just a few feet away. The divemaster signaled to be still, and the lady divers froze. The moment the sharks passed by, the women made a beeline back up the rope and tumbled into the boat.
When the men returned, I told Lois, “We barely saw a thing.”
Lois had seen all she needed to see. Over time, however, she developed a love for scuba diving and became my best diving buddy.
WHEN IT CAME to skiing, Lois could beat me hands down. Having never skied until I was in my fifties, I might not have had the most graceful style, but I picked it up relatively quickly. Lois was an excellent teacher, with her unmistakable quick-turning, deep-knee-bending style. We did most of our skiing in Sun Valley, where Lois had a home. I became familiar with the slopes, and with all of her ski buddies there. The year before Lois and I met, she had attended a gala celebrity event celebrating Sun Valley’s fiftieth anniversary. It was produced by Marjoe Gortner, a onetime child evangelist and movie star, now turned premier event producer. Supposedly named for Mary and Joseph by his minister parents, Marjoe could preach a sermon and quote scripture when he was only four years old. With his angelic yellow curls, he went on to pack revival tents throughout the South until he was seventeen.
Since 1987 he had devoted most of his time to producing several invitational celebrity sports events per year in locations such as Sun Valley, Lake Louise, Cabo San Lucas, Hawaii, Jamaica, and other resorts. These events often brought together a diverse group of entertainment and sports celebrities to compete in ski races, target snow-golf, snowshoe races, tobogganing, and water sports, but the weekend always revolved around an auction that raised money for a charity.
Our team leaders were Winter Olympics stars, and at one such event I was expected to be one of the slalom racers. Spectators didn’t care whether I had ever been on skis before or not, they just loved to see the celebrities slipping and sliding and tumbling their way down the mountain. But, thanks to Lois giving me ski lessons that first Christmas we were together, I fooled them, and although I was older than most of the competitors, I held my own. I didn’t win any of the races, but I sure didn’t lose, and I rarely fell on my face.
I’VE BEEN A member of The Explorers Club for years, meeting and interacting with such world-class explorers as the Cousteaus, Sir Edmund Hillary, and many more. At one of the annual galas, Lois and I met Lady Alexandra Foley a woman who worked with RMS Titanic, Inc., the company that had been granted “salvor-in-possession rights” to the Titanic. They had the right to explore the wreck and surrounding ocean areas, to obtain oceanographic material and scientific data from the area, and to retrieve artifacts from the sunken ship. The RMS Titanic folks had arranged for two cruise ships, the Royal Majesty, which would depart from Boston, and the SS Island Breeze, embarking from New York in August 1996, to sail to the area above the wreckage. Among the 3,000 passengers aboard those two ships would be survivors from the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, when, on April 14, it struck an iceberg