The Right Stuff

This guy had the halo turned on at all times! Gle

Well… hell… maybe he was sincere, after all. God knew that for any pilot to get involved in that much Sunday school and that many church boards and good works, he'd have to be a true believer and a half. Perhaps he even meant it about Wife & Family… which would make him an even rarer breed of fighter pilot. If anybody asked Gus—like right now—if he were religious, a family man, and a patriot, he would say yes, he was religious, and yes, he was a family man, and yes, he was a patriot. But the firmest conviction of the three was about being a patriot. When Gus said he would gladly ride a Mercury rocket for the sake of his country, he meant it. Alan Shepard said the same thing and there was not the slightest doubt that he meant it. And there was no doubt that Gle

Neither he nor any of the others set about altering that picture, however. At first it was hard to figure out what was happening. Gle

"Could I ask for a show of hands of how many are confident that they will come back from outer space?"

Gus and the others started looking down the table at each other, and then they all started hoisting their hands in the air. It really made you feel like an idiot, raising your hand this way. If you didn't think you were "coming back," then you would really have to be a fool or a nut to have volunteered at all. As the seven of them looked at each other sitting there with their hands up in the air like schoolchildren, they began gri

And this man, John Gle

By the next morning the seven Mercury astronauts were national heroes. It happened just like that. Even though so far they had done nothing more than show up for a press conference, they were known as the seven bravest men in America. They woke up to find astonishing acclaim all over the press. There it was, in the more sophisticated columns as well as in the tabloids and on television. Even James Reston of The New York Times had been so profoundly moved by the press conference and the sight of the seven brave men that his heart, he confessed, now beat a little faster. "What made them so exciting," he wrote, "was not that they said anything new but that they said all the old things with such fierce convictions… They spoke of 'duty' and 'faith' and 'country' like Walt Whitman's pioneers… This is a pretty cynical town, but nobody went away from these young men scoffing at their courage and idealism." Manly courage, the right stuff—the Halo Effect, with Deacon Gle