You.

Hello, and welcome to the book, Mark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today.

My guests are Barbara Lee and Ed Sarkis, authors of the Barbara, the Astronaut and the Golf Ball.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having us.

I like the title because it's kind of curious, and it makes you want to know more.

Can you start by just maybe briefly telling us what this book is about?

Well, the barber is our family barber from our childhood.

His name is Carlos Gomez.

The astronaut is Alan Shepard.

First American in space and the first person to play golf on the moon.

And at this stage, the only person to ever have played golf in the moon.

The barber, the astronaut, and the golf ball involves a gift that was given to Carlos by Alan Shepard because of their strong friendship, after his return from his moon golfing episode and the debate in the book, on its surface is about whether the golf ball really flew to the moon.

But there's much underneath that explains the relationship between the man.

Sure.

How did this how did this book come to be?

So Carlos is an old family friend.

Did he tell you this story?

And you thought, we need to get this out there in the world?

Or how did how did the book come to be?

Well, we've been hearing the story since we were kids.

Actually, Ed knew Carlos, even before I did.

Right.

Carlos has been cutting my hair since I was a about sixth grader.

Oh, wow.

And he's cut my son's hair, and now it's cut my grandson's hair.

So he's quite, quite a good friend.

And he's talked about this golf ball for a long time.

And, it's an interesting piece of, history.

And it came out that we wanted to honor Carlos because he's been there for everybody.

You know, there's he's the go to person care.

Like, if you need something done hospital need something, he'll get it for them.

Carlos is a fellow from the segregated wards of the ship channel, one of 15 children who, at age 18, like all of his brothers, volunteered for the Navy and, Carlos, his story was one we wanted to tell, and Alan Shepard fit it in quite well since they were friends.

So it's the tale of the friendship between these two men, and it's demonstrative of our childhood growing up as children of NASA engineers.

That was will be my next question.

Your personal history with NASA is also named.

Maybe there's a book there, too, because it's really fascinating and you kind of grew up.

I think the biases in the shadow of NASA.

Can you can you talk about that?

Yes.

We we grew up in Clear Lake before Clear Lake was Clear Lake.

We were there before NASA was built.

Or at least I was.

Barra came a little bit later.

We are next door neighbors.

There's two bedroom communities there, Largo and Timber Cove.

And that was it.

And your next door neighbors were astronauts or rocket scientists.

And Barbara's father was a rocket scientist.

My father was a rocket scientist.

As a poet, you know, it's interesting that in Apollo 13, the movie, when they had the, the scene where the engineers are locked in the conference room.

That was Barbara's father.

And it was an accurate portrayal.

Yes, yes.

Ed knew a lot more about it than I did, actually, and has a great greater interest in the details of the science.

And so Ed's ed made a lot of contribution to the book, because where I did not know perhaps all the science, this is a, this is somebody who.

Well, we both worked at NASA when we were kids.

I worked in the souvenir shop.

But Ed worked, in the medical area as a teenager.

So it's just kind of shows the differences between us two.

And our fathers were great friends.

Yes, indeed.

Our fathers decided this would be a good marriage, actually.

So it was great to see they were right.

Turns out they were right because there's another back story there.

But that's a different book.

That's not one.

That's not a book.

Right?

That, this book also, has a documentary kind of, companion piece.

You talk about that a little bit, too.

Well, the last page is the link to the biography.

So the book itself, is has the same arc as the short 25 minute documentary by a fine, British documentarian Jonathan Richards.

And it tells the story in 25 minutes that we tell in the book.

And it's it's really the story of the friendship between, Carlos and Sheppard and whether or not that friendship, which was strongly challenged by a very fine expert.

Said astronauts only give these kinds of gifts if they flew.

They these lunar gifts are only given to people like family or the closest of friends.

And the expert was right.

And he challenged us in many ways.

And so that challenge, in a way, as we did the documentary, to honor Carlos, to honor our friends, and our fathers.

But the the way to have a way to get to the root of it was to go and interview more astronauts and learn more.

And that's why we wrote the book, because the documentary at its face told the story.

But we wanted to get behind the scenes.

And my favorite part of the book is the resources section.

You can see what a nerd I am, but the resources, the interviews with heads of NASA, with other astronauts, Apollo moonwalkers it was.

It was just a big adventure.

Yes, I wanted to highlight the interviews are some of the richest parts for me of the book, because you get to hear some firsthand accounts of people who would have been contemporary to these two men.

Of course, Carlos is in the book himself, too.

And just hearing the stories and hearing kind of the corroboration of this friendship, of this relationship of this time period, was fascinating to read, including the most cooperative of imaginable person, Laura Shepard church like an astronaut herself from from a private the space, flights standpoint.

She was wonderfully cooperative.

And so we learned so much about Alan Shepard, both from Carlos, who was his dear friend and golf buddy and drinking buddy, and helped him in the business because Alan Shepard eventually set up a beer distributorship and Carlos ran a beer garden.

And so Carlos taught Alan Shepard how to sell Colorado Coors beer in Bud Country.

So the whole thing was a wonderful adventure.

And we got to interview Charlie Duke, who lives here in the Hill Country, and, get his take on Shepard.

And then we looked at some of the the writings of Shepard.

That was the most fascinating thing to look at Shepard's writings himself about what he valued and what was important to him, and why he was such an extraordinary person.

And so the resources section in the back, as nerdy as it sounds, is really one of the most exciting.

Well, I think that's, that's that's a great way to look at it.

It's like if you read the book and you want to know more, you've provided us with so many resources to learn more about about these men, about NASA, about space flight, all that stuff.

I want to talk about the main characters a little bit.

You've kind of hinted at them, but we we have Alan Shepard.

I would hope most people know who he is.

But if somebody doesn't, can you tell us who he was, what he did?

Alan Shepard as a Navy pilot, test pilot.

He's the first American in space suborbital flight.

He also flew as, lunar.

He landed on the moon, I can't remember.

He's been a module commander.

Or he was the commander of the lunar module.

Had the red stripes.

You remember in his spacesuit?

He was both a commander and, of course, had a difficult landing.

And it was he who remarkably landed that, Right.

Lem?

Yes.

I mean, the right I mean, yeah, he it was an amazing episode we talk about here.

And then he became eventually became an admiral.

And Carlos is a boatswain's mate in the navy.

So you have the top and the very bottom, and they're they're the best of friends.

I love how you broke up the book because we kind of start with the astronaut and we get, you get a whole kind of full biography almost of, of, of you started with the barber.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

We, we honored the barber.

Yes that's correct.

That and Bagby barber on golf ball.

It's and.

Well let's talk about Carlos too.

He he started, as you mentioned, in the Navy.

And then how did he get into barbering?

How did he end up kind of at the right place at the right time to.

Because he wasn't just Alan Shepard's barber.

He was the barber to many astronauts as well.

He started out in south Houston and he was working for some, north of Houston and, this was after he left the Navy and, he was approached by NASA saying, we need a barber down here.

And Carlos, being an entrepreneur, said, okay, let me think about it.

And there was no real spot to go to.

So he rented a room at the holiday end that was a old dentist office, and he didn't have a barber chair that he rented, that he bought the dentist chair.

He started with very little, and everything he had was thanks to the GI Bill, actually, and he credits the GI Bill and of course, his parents and his siblings, and his military training for the discipline needed to become an entrepreneur.

Quite famous.

At one point, Carlos had not just his own business.

He also had a shop at, right in the center of Houston.

And Barber did out of a fancy hotel, the Plaza.

I think it was the Plaza or the starts with a W, but a famous hotel, the Warrick.

And he.

He did the Duke of Windsor?

Yes, I think it was he he, he Barber.

The Duke of Windsor.

He barber.

John Wayne, he barber.

Then the head of the Houston Symphony, Andre Previn.

And he did Mia, mia Farrow's hair as well.

He he liked to do short hair on women and so he was he was really famous, for quite a time, particularly because of his connection with the astronauts, of course.

But he was also a fine barber.

And until very recently now it's hard for him to stand on his feet.

He's almost 90.

So he now supervises, he's supervised, trained the next generation.

Yeah.

Shoots next.

And he did our father's to us, our children and our grandchildren.

So these, four generations of our family, it's wonderful.

I liked I never thought about it until I read this book.

The potential relationship between, a barber and an astronaut.

But especially in this time period, a men's haircut would have been a vital piece of of kind of, how they look at how they present themselves to the world.

And these are military men.

They're in the Navy.

They're astronauts, they and NASA, and I'm sure America wanted to present a certain image of what an astronaut looks like.

And so that must have been vital, a vital piece of, of image craft.

I guess what we learned from Laura Shepard and really a lot of reading that Shepard care deeply about his presentation and his he was the most famous of the astronauts because he was the first one chosen to go into space.

And from the time he had to visit Kennedy, in the Rose garden, John F Kennedy in the Rose garden until the time that he was scheduled after Apollo 14, to visit the president in the Rose garden so many years later.

He had he had a mission after each mission, and it involved addressing joint session of Congress, flying across the pond to London and Paris for massive meetings, including with the Soviet cosmonauts and the world's press.

And so this this activity required him to look good.

And he cared deeply about his appearance.

And, we go through the details of his difficult hair and the description of how difficult it was for him to grow his very short military cut into what was, a very difficult hairstyle, that he wanted to maintain, that the world press called the Shepard shag.

And it went viral in those days, in the early 70s, it went to the actual newspaper print newspaper version of viral the haircut.

Carlos the Barber became famous.

And, is there another, I think, piece of that relationship that shows how much, he trusted his barber?

Is that, as you say, it was a difficult process to get his hair to do that.

It involved sitting under the lady's hairdryer.

And did he do?

Yeah.

Doing all these things that he maybe made him feel vulnerable because he didn't want to be photographed.

He didn't want to be seen in that position.

And he could trust Carlos to keep his privacy to to keep it.

And not a secret, but just, I mean, keep keep that out of the press and keep those photographs, which today would be even more difficult.

But as a good friend, he did that for him.

He did.

And there are no photographs of Shepard looking anything other than, very well groomed and NASA cooperated in this.

We talked about the old PR man, Gene Horton at NASA, who particularly, protected Shepard as the first man in space and made sure, for example, that the press that was awaiting him when he returned from, his first, you know, suborbital, not suborbital, but his first, Mercury, for several suborbital flight flight.

He protected Gene Horton, protected him.

And we believe that Gene Horton may well have protected Shepard a lot more so that he could also have his privacy.

He was a famously private man.

Never wanted to talk.

Yes, I wanted to to highlight that piece of it, because it's kind of fascinating.

Here is at the moment that he was the first American space, potentially the most famous man in America, but he he wants to keep his own personal life, his private life private.

How did he go about balancing that and achieving that?

Well, he had a wonderful wife and family who understood both, their obligations in some ways, that the public deserve to have certain information.

But, in other ways, he was completely protective of his family.

And so, the deal that was made for Re7, which is the famous book by the astronauts and all of the, the relationships with time, life allowed some privacy.

And his wife was very protective of the children, but at the same time understood her responsibilities.

And so we we go into that a lot because there is one book where Shepard actually talked about it, and that one book, was done because Shepard was good friends with Deke Slayton and cooperated in the book and gave us incredible stories about himself and his family.

Because, Deke Slayton was dying.

And so Shepard let down his guard for that one purpose so that there would be a successful book for the family of Slayton.

Quite a quite a generous act on his part, given his strong penchant for privacy.

There was an anecdote to the book about his wife kind of putting a sign out on the door saying, there are no reporters in here.

I will come talk to you when the time is right, because she she didn't want them to keep bothering them while he was on his mission.

And the astronaut wives, all generally because they all lived in two communities, with one exception.

And that was Shepard.

But the astronaut wives, were were very, learned how to be very firm.

And, they had to be very strong from Betty Grissom, who had to fight for her.

Right.

As an astronaut widow, in the Apollo one fire to, to Annie Glenn.

To and to Mrs. Shepherd.

Very strong women during the early flight spaceflights, even up to the Apollo missions, the astronauts homes were cordoned off.

They were surrounded by satellite TV trucks, and there were people outside their homes, 24 seven lights blazing and it was it was a circus.

It's very.

But that was sort of how we grew up.

If.

Well, and everybody, you know, it's such an exciting time in America.

People want to want to see, want to know.

I want to talk about, that Apollo 14 mission, the one that I think I wrote it down.

Who?

He later complained that he was better known for hitting a golf ball on the moon than he was for being the first American in space.

How did that come to be?

How did he.

How did that you know, where did he get that idea?

Why did he want to hit a golf ball on the moon?

Where did that come from?

Well, he was inspired by Bob Hope, who was a dear friend because Bob Hope carried around a golf club.

And, that inspiration led him to think that if it was a successful mission and he loved this man, loved golf, it was clear that Alan Shepard loved golf.

And so he decided to both honor the sport that he loved and also do one up, with the other astronauts had done in terms of dropping a, a LED and a and a feather to see that how gravity worked.

He decided he would demonstrate gravity in space.

And we we found an excerpt from an old film, The talk he did.

And with a smile, he said that this was going to be a very good science experiment.

He cleared it with the with all the authorities that needed to be.

He had no opportunity to practice until he was in quarantine beforehand.

And so the whole story of how he went about this in a very scientific way, making sure that it would be a a good, a good science experiment, but also honor the sport he loved.

And so the real question that we raised in the book, and, we have an expert who was quite critical of our, of our our belief and Carlos's belief that the ball flew.

The real question is, what would a man of science like Shepard who believed never getting back on your heels?

Would such a man bring two golf balls in case you missed it?

Or would he bring an extra golf ball, a second reserve ball?

And so the the debate, allows us to explore all these wonderful aspect aspects of, of Shepard and his scientific method and what his principles were.

And his scientific writing is fascinating because he believed in redundancy backups, and he knew what saved him as a remarkable Navy test pilot.

I want to talk to you about why it was kind of he cleared it as you said.

So there was no it was that secret to NASA but it was not publicly known or.

No.

No not, not a lot of people knew who didn't need to know that this is a possible his family didn't know.

Yeah.

His family didn't even know it was a secret.

Except maybe to his superiors.

Definitely to the superiors.

They knew what he was.

Yes.

But.

And the reason for that is because this is Apollo 14 were just coming off of, as you mentioned, there's a movie about 13.

So things went so horribly wrong.

He didn't want to be seen as frivolous in case something did happen.

So, can you can you talk about kind of why that was important to him, to wait until it seemed like things were going to go right?

Well, he was a big proponent of space travel, and he did not want to do anything that would embarrass NASA.

So if the mission went well, he was going to hit the golf ball.

If it didn't go well, it's going to stay in his pocket and nobody's going to know the wiser.

And man, he could keep a secret.

His family not only didn't know the flight controllers at NASA didn't know.

And so what what?

There's one episode that we portray where we found the quote, Gene Kranz and others really wrote well about it.

The the scene at NASA where all of the flight controllers are amazed to see, him pull out AA6 iron and, well, a special six that had been very carefully, made, a six iron.

And what he called a little white pellet.

And if we believe and so does the expert, that if he'd hit that first white pellet.

Well, the golf ball that no one would ever have known, there was a second ball or third ball or.

Well, and we'll say there's a third ball.

Golf balls when you buy them, come in threes.

That's true.

And we have we've set up the debate.

And so the book really puts puts the issue in terms of both a scientific aspect and also in terms of the personal aspect.

You get to know Shepard so well because his daughter gave us so much more insight than you see, even in his even his own writings, which are considerable.

He wrote he wrote beautifully, this man could write and I, I have a copy of the cover of the Golden Book I had as a child growing up.

This is the predecessor to Re7, a Golden Book.

You can see the kind of books that were in my library as a kid.

And he wrote here so movingly for children about the importance of getting things right.

Always be prepared.

Never get back on your heels.

And and it it was inspiring.

And he talks about his teacher in our book.

He came from a one room schoolhouse, all six grades.

And one teacher made the difference.

He said in his life, one teacher.

It just gives me goosebumps to talk about how much he loved that one teacher responsible for his entire grade school education.

He was a champion of things like that.

Like you say, teachers.

You mentioned Gil Grissom's widow.

He was very involved in fundraising and making sure they were all taken care of.

And he just seemed like a very generous, a generous spirit.

Well, he also founded the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, along with the the original seven astronauts and his daughter, Laura Shepard Church is the executive director.

Well, she she used to be the the the head of the chairman of the board.

And I think they have a separate executive director.

But yes, she's very active in astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

She continued his legacy and now gives millions of dollars of scholarships.

Every year.

And it's it's most impressive.

And we've gotten involved a little bit thanks to Laura and and turned out to our other astronaut interview.

Interviewee Charlie Duke.

Charlie Duke, and another moonwalker, telling us about Alan Shepard.

It was just remarkable.

And about himself.

Most remarkable.

Man.

Let's, let's talk about the mystery of the golf ball, because we hit those two.

Where does the mystery come in?

Like when he comes up to set it up, he comes home.

Back then, astronauts had to quarantine after.

Not just before.

And then the first person he sees, all except for his wife.

Maybe after he comes out of quarantine.

This is Barbara.

Correct.

And he gives the barber a he shakes hands with the barber and the barber feels a hard round object in his hand.

And then Shepard says go inside, shut the door and he, but he says he says this is for you, this is for you and take good care of it.

Words to that effect, Carlos can't quite remember.

And the two men never talked about it again for the entirety of.

Until Shepard's death.

Never, never.

Even Shepard never told Shepard.

Charles never asked if the ball flew.

Carlos never asked for provenance, and Shepard never offered any.

And so there's no written.

There's no written provenance.

So, it's it's, you know, we'll we'll let you read.

We will let you read it, get into it.

But you delve in pretty, pretty scientifically, almost into, you know, you speak to experts on memorabilia and, the lore of space memorabilia.

Yes.

All of that.

And it's fascinating.

I didn't realize there was some.

And it makes sense that there would be laws around space memorabilia.

It's a Texas oriented law to Texas, the state of Texas and the Texas congressional delegation made the law of, moon memorabilia and moondust.

So if you want to maybe solve the mystery for yourself or see what what happened there, I would encourage people to read the book because it is a fascinating, investigation into whether this golf ball really flew or not.

We're I as I said, we're running short on time.

So in our final two minutes here, what would you hope people take away from your book?

You have it.

Okay.

I think it's about friendship, and it's about honoring the people of service, much as Shepard and the astronauts and our fathers, and the heads of NASA all honored the people who serve us and serve us, just like we try to serve others in our work.

And it's about friendships.

And, for us, it it brought out a wonderful side and taught us so much about relationships.

It's about friendship, I think.

Yes, I agree, and you know how, everybody serves for the greater good.

You can be at the top of the food chain or the bottom of the food chain.

You make a difference.

It's it's a fascinating portrait.

And it makes me wonder how many other wonderful stories are there, like, like this of relationships with people we wouldn't think or stories that we haven't been told.

So I'm grateful that you told Carlos's story and got it out there because it is.

It is a fascinating story about someone who and as you say, he has gone on to do wonderful things in his community.

He is a he is a big deal to, to to the people in the community.

And hopefully this book will help more a greater population.

Recognize what a wonderful person, what a wonderful spirit he is.

Brilliant people surround us.

We just have to recognize them for their worth.

Well, that's that's a perfect way to end it.

I can't think of a better ending.

Thank you so much for being here for for talking about this book with me.

It was a joy, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

The book again is the Barber, the astronaut and the Golf Ball.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And I will see you again soon.