gusgrissomdogoodwork

Mercury astronauts Gordon Cooper (left) and Alan Shepard (center) at Kearney Mesa tour circa 1959.

Mercury astronauts: 4th from left is Alan Shepard, and 5th from left is Gordon Cooper. At far right is Scott Carpenter, wearing the same Visitor badge as Shepard and Cooper.

“Gus Grissom was out in San Diego in the Convair plant, where they were working on the Atlas rocket, and Gus was as uneasy at this stuff as Cooper was. Asking Gus to “just say a few words” was like handing him a knife and asking him to open a main vein. But hundreds of workers are gathered in the main auditorium of the Convair plant to see Gus and the other six, and they’re beaming at them, and the Convair brass say a few words and then the astronauts are supposed to say a few words, and all at once Gus realizes it’s his turn to say something, and he is petrified. He opens his mouth and out come the words: “Well… do good work!” It’s an ironic remark, implying: “… because it’s my ass that’ll be sitting on your freaking rocket.” But the workers started cheering like mad. They started cheering as if they had just heard the most moving and inspiring message of their lives: Do good work! After all, it’s Little Gus’s ass on top of our rocket! They stood there for an eternity and cheered their brains out while Gus gazed blankly upon them from the Pope’s balcony. Not only that, the workers—the workers, not the management but the workers!—had a flag company make up a huge banner, and they strung it up high in the main work bay, and it said: DO GOOD WORK.” - Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979)