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By Root 1461 0

started attending the weekly sessions as well. Within six months, Mike’s issues—many of which stemmed from five years of age, when he had been separated from Joan and me for months, as we both were hospitalized with hepatitis—were fairly well resolved. But Joan and I continued to meet with Dr. Prall in an effort to grapple with some of our own problems. Eventually, Dr. Prall focused on me as the primary source of the problems. I was becoming increasingly moody and dismissive of other people, including Joan and the kids. A volcano was seething within me, below the surface of my life, the pressure building more with each passing week. The only relief I found was in another shot of Scotch—and then another.

When NASA asked me to consider an opportunity that would require my visiting Sweden, the land of my ancestors, I thought that perhaps turning it into a family vacation might help. We spent fourteen days in Sweden, and while there I received the Swedish Order of the Vasa, an honor presented to Swedish-Americans who had accomplished a great achievement. I guess going to the moon qualified. And in some ways this trip made up for the fact that we did not visit Sweden during the worldwide Apollo 11 goodwill tour.

Because it was a technology-oriented trip rather than a diplomatic one, I spent some time speaking at various engineering and aeronautical functions, but I tried to focus on my family more than on official groups. And to some extent we were successful. Our youngest son, Andy, and I went scuba diving down to a sunken ship in the harbor; Mike found a new pet, a borzoi puppy that we ended up shipping back to Houston; and Jan, Joan, and I enjoyed getting to know more about my relatives in Värmland, where my grandfather had been born.

While in Sweden, I had been scheduled by the U.S. State Department to meet with King Gustaf VI, but just prior to leaving, I received a notice that the king had to cancel. The suggested date for rescheduling was five days after we planned to leave the country. That was a bit of a disappointment, but not an inconvenience. Then we received word from the State Department that the meeting with the king was not optional. Our trip was extended by five days, and King Gustaf VI and I had a pleasant visit. But it bothered me that I was once again being moved around as little more than a pawn in a diplomatic chess game, with little regard for how it inconvenienced my family, our hosts, or me.

Moreover, the NASA protocol officer who had accompanied us to Sweden and was supposed to facilitate our trip proved inefficient and a constant source of irritation. It may have been unfair to do so, but I took his inattention and insolence as a reflection of NASA’s attitude toward me. Had I not given them eight years of my life? Could they not find someone better than this fellow to help take care of my family and me on a foreign trip? I felt deserted. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

Back home in Houston, as I reviewed our trip, I slowly slid into the doldrums. I found myself spending most of the day or evening staring at the television set. Joan and the children didn’t know what to do for me, and I passed off my blues as fatigue from our trip. Nobody mentioned that the family had been just as tired as I had been, and they were functioning just fine.

During my periods of melancholy, I again pondered my future. What was I going to do? I was barely forty years of age; I couldn’t continue this way. I pulled myself together and decided to go to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Air Force chief of staff to consider my possible return to the Air Force. Although I had several business interests, nothing challenged me enough to want to pour myself into a career, so resuming my status as a colonel in the Air Force seemed a viable option.

Meanwhile, NASA was moving ahead with preliminary plans for developing the space shuttle program that would follow the Apollo program. When NASA asked me to be part of a committee to assess the design of the shuttle, I willingly took on the task. Perhaps there