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By Root 1454 0

holiday season, and this was where I would lay out my intentions to her. I actually thought that divorce might be a relief to Joan. After all, she had witnessed so much of my withdrawal into myself since returning from the moon, she even said at times that she didn’t feel I was the same person she had married. She told me that she would never walk away quietly and grant me the divorce, that she would fight for all she could get financially in divorce proceedings. I think she felt that if she could slow me down with financial concerns, she might be able to delay the divorce long enough to save our marriage. But I didn’t care about money; I never really did, and still don’t today. To me, money is a commodity that a person must have to function, not a goal in itself.

While Joan and I bounced from vitriolic conversations to silent, sullen, peaceful coexistence in the beachside hotel room, my sister Fay Ann called to say that while visiting with her family for Christmas in San Francisco, Dad had suffered a heart attack. He was in the hospital. “It doesn’t look good, Buzz,” she said. I racked my brain trying to decide what to do. Should I head for California, or remain in Mexico? I was already up to my neck in stress from trying to deal with my relationship with Joan, and I figured that Dad was either going to recover or he was going to die before I could get there. Fay Ann was staying with him in the hospital, so I remained in Acapulco with Joan and the kids. The extra days did nothing to improve our relationship, and on December 28, before I left Acapulco, Dad died from complications stemming from the heart attack; he was seventy-eight years of age.

Because of his military service, Dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Joan and our children did not attend the funeral, partially because of the costs involved in travel from California to Washington, D.C., but more because I chose to go alone. I stood stoically—as expected—while the uniformed soldiers carried my father’s casket across the frozen grass. My face remained equally as frozen as the casket was placed in position, the flag presented to my oldest sister, and the lonely sound of a trumpet playing “Taps” echoed across the rows of white tombstones. I didn’t flinch or shed a tear during the ceremony, but later that night I drowned my sorrows with alcohol.

AFTER THE FUNERAL, I returned to L.A., and initiated the divorce from Joan. We parted with no additional malice or rancor; we were both too mentally exhausted to fight over anything. Our marriage ended not so much with a loud blow-out as with a slow dwindling away of the energy required to maintain it. I moved into the Oakwood Apartments in Woodland Hills, a nearby section of Los Angeles, so I could stay in contact with our kids, and Joan and I remained friends over the years.

Meanwhile, my drinking was becoming more of a public issue. At one point, Perry Winston, a friend and fellow pilot, wrote a letter to me, frankly chiding me that as a national hero I needed to be more responsible about my drinking. Ironically, Perry worked for a liquor company, and the numbers on his plane were 100 PW, which could have been 100 Perry Winston, or 100 Proof Whiskey. Perry’s letter irritated me. Why is this guy on my case, I pouted. Doesn’t he recognize that I know what I’m doing? But then even a worse thought occurred to me: Maybe he is right.

Perry was one of the few people not in a recovery group ever to confront me about my drinking. Unfortunately, while landing his plane at Orange County, he hit some lights during his final approach and crashed. Perry did not survive, and I lost a true friend.

DURING THE DIVORCE process, I lived alone and tended to get extremely down on myself. My friend Jack Daniel’s, however, never failed to lift my spirits, albeit falsely. During this time, on my “up” days I was active, traveling, and working; I shared some of my latest homemade energy conservation inventions (along with a mock-up of Apollo) at the Inventors Expo II at the Los Angeles Convention Center, appeared at mental health