Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(18)

Susan said yes. Frank wished he’d heard it.

The two began dating, and right away Frank sensed he’d met his soul mate. Susan was bright and quick-witted, warm and fun, and loyal to her friends. Sometimes she wrote “Susan Bugaboo” instead of “Bugbee” in her notebooks. She had a mischievous gleam in her eye, the same as when she’d been in elementary school and pulled the fire alarm during a rainstorm as a prank (the nuns were not happy; Susan’s father loved it and smoothed things over with the sisters).

Susan’s parents were both college graduates, rare in those days. Her mother was Tucson’s first female dental hygienist, her father a surgeon who’d moved to Arizona after losing a lung to tuberculosis. Susan had been very close to her father, who took her on house calls and had her join him on his volunteer work to help the underprivileged. They often went on adventures together: on his days off, he would drive her outside the Tucson city limits to the ends of dusty roads, where they would capture tortoises together (she’d keep them as pets for a while, then release them), and Dr. Bugbee would buy his daughter turquoise jewelry from Native Americans who sold their wares from the backs of old pickup trucks. Susan was never as close to her mother, who seemed to resent her for all the attention people paid to her.

One day, when Susan was thirteen, her father had an asthma attack. His oxygen bottle was empty, so Susan’s mother told her to run to Johnson’s Drugstore and get a new one. Susan got the pharmacist to drive her home, to save time and in case he could help. But by the time she returned, her father lay dead on the floor.

“You’re late,” Susan’s mother said. “You killed your father.”

The words devastated Susan. On the spot, she knew she’d never forget them. But something about that incident steeled Susan’s spine. From the day Frank began dating her, he sensed an undergirding of strength in Susan. This girl, he thought, can handle anything.

As high school drew to a close, Frank needed to decide on a future. He wanted to be a fighter pilot—a perfect way to combine flying and defense of his country. World War II had ended nearly a year earlier, but already tensions were building with the Soviet Union. No less an expert in looming tyranny than Winston Churchill now warned that “an iron curtain” had descended across Europe. Frank believed him.

After scoring high on admissions exams, Frank enrolled at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the fall of 1946. Cadet Borman was all baby face and golden hair compared to his classmates. Many had already attended college, and at least half were veterans of World War II. In early fall, Borman tried out for the plebe (first year) football team. He’d been a star high school quarterback, but at this level he didn’t have the necessary arm strength. He joined anyway, as the varsity team’s assistant manager, in charge of gathering dirty socks and sweaty jockstraps. It was thrilling for Borman, who got to observe head coach Earl Blaik’s legendary intensity and to watch one of the young assistant coaches, Vince Lombardi, develop his own military coaching style.

Borman fell in love with West Point. The rules, the order, the discipline—it all seemed designed to tune out distraction and allow a man to get on with what really mattered. As a kid, he’d already been different from his peers—he went after the things that were important to him, as if he were on a mission. At West Point, nothing mattered but the mission. He pledged himself to the academy’s motto—Duty, Honor, Country. It seemed to Borman that a person who believed in anything less wouldn’t get where he needed to go.

All the while, Borman and Susan continued dating, if only by U.S. mail. She was still in Tucson, and they were separated by more than two thousand miles. West Point did not allow furloughs for plebes, even for holidays. Fearing he’d receive a breakup letter from Susan, Borman struck first, sending a letter to Susan saying they needed to cool their relationship. It only made sense, in light of their distance, his commitment to West Point, and the focus he’d need to make his new dream, of becoming an Air Force general, come true. Susan knew: She was no longer his mission. The letter broke her heart.

By the end of his third year, Borman ranked near the top of his class. For her part, Susan had enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania’s dental hygiene school, following in her mother’s footsteps. While there, she was offered a contract with the Ford Modeling Agency in New York, which she declined. During quiet moments, Borman wondered if he’d made the mistake of a lifetime by letting her go.

In the summer of 1949, Borman was one of a select few cadets chosen to tour postwar Germany. For him, the biggest impression came at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. There, he saw the firing range and gallows used to execute Jewish prisoners, and the ovens used to cremate them. And he saw families, East German refugees, living in tiny stalls in the barracks, separated from other families only by hanging blankets; these were people who’d chosen to give up everything and flee to the West rather than live under Communist rule. The trip sickened and saddened him, and it reinforced his certainty that America was a force for good in the world, a country that stepped up to help suffering people and defend freedom.

When Borman returned from Germany, he only missed Susan more. She had returned to Tucson after earning her degree, and was chosen over seventy-one other contestants as the city’s representative at a Mardi Gras festival in Mexico. The local newspaper showed her draped in a silver-blue mink cape and wearing over a thousand dollars’ worth of silver and turquoise. In case Borman had forgotten what he’d lost, the newspaper noted that the selection was based on “beauty, poise, personality, charm, and intellect.”