The Hidden Truth Behind a Legendary Astronaut's Public Life

hey before we get going here let me remind you that if you're not already a subscriber please become one so you don't miss anything also if you'd like to help support the channel please consider using the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com wardcarroll thanks now when frank borman joined nasa and was selected to command the first mission to orbit the moon that meant his wife susan had to put on a brave face for the world as her husband risked his life for the space race the pressure and anxiety were overwhelming and eventually susan's well-hidden depression and alcoholism came to light frank finally had to come to terms with how his mission above all else mentality contributed to his wife's suffering now this untold story of the bormans is captured in a new book called far side of the moon apollo 8 commander frank borman and the woman who gave him wings by author lisa jorgensen lisa and her husband michael a filmmaker joined me from their home in alberta recently to talk about this topic in great detail like many things in life the borman's fairy tale existence was not quite that so let's go back to the early days because here he is the football star and she's the hometown beauty queen yeah so on paper they were sort of bound for great success and they had that at once then the public eye they were you know i mean who wouldn't want to be frank borman in the 60s right but they had a dark side which you know we'll we'll explore as we go along here but let's go back to the sort of american gothic their their hometown sort of startup talk about uh their courtship frank basically fell in love with her at first sight at a dance and uh he was as you mentioned the quarterback and she was this beautiful tall willowy blonde and he just kind of fell head over heels and so they started dating when susan was 15 and dated basically his last year of high school all through his last year of high school they got very serious very quickly and then frank was off to west point and he realized when he got there that this was going to involve everything he had to give and frank being frank mission comes first he broke up with susan because he just thought he didn't have time for a relationship and then basically regretted it almost immediately and spent the next four years writing letters and essentially launching a campaign to get her back and she had dated some other guys during that point but still kept in contact with him and she was actually quite serious with someone when frank graduated and basically got in his car drove home to arizona and called her and said i want to take you for dinner and he he popped the question he had a ring in his pocket and she said yes and then had to break up with with her serious boyfriend and and they got married right away well yeah leaving out a detail if we were to make a movie out of this we wouldn't leave this scene out where the boyfriend shows up or what what happened there in their uh you know there was a fight i mean he had this yeah there was a that's right and frances put him down and uh yeah it was it was obviously pretty dramatic but um it was yeah it's it's a great movie scene for sure and it was fun right i mean he she was she engaged to that guy or they were very serious they were they were already talking that way that that they were you know kind of planning a future together so yeah yeah so what frank once frank gets kind of a thing right he just as you said he was focused at west point and then i was like you know i think i love her right and he just comes back and he's like you're mine and she was kind of up for it right because i think she had uh you know had still feelings for him in spite of the fact that he broke up with her obviously yeah um and so now they're together and off they go to flight school and this trajectory of the us air force and what struck me with some of these early places they live as just how spartan to be polite about it the living arrangements were because this has been profiled in movies like the right stuff and stuff but it's really really like kind of ghetto where they wind up living and what she's put through while he's focused on first getting his wings and then being a jet guy and then tps and everything else yeah no it's so true and and that was something that again was really fun to research but also really drove home how amazing these women were that they had to deal with unbelievable conditions and they usually had small children the washroom facilities were brutal like it was it was very challenging and it was that way at just about every base they went to so the thing about this is in this era so we're talking the 50s the air force particularly didn't really care about families there was no family services it was like if we why don't you have a wife we'd issue you one ha ha ha right kind of a thing so this becomes the theme for the spouses it almost gets worse at nasa um but certainly during these days and because he's so focused he's not home a whole lot and she's in these desert ramshackle places as you said sometimes there's not running water there's no facilities there's nothing around her you know so you're thinking how glamorous to be a fighter pilot's wife right and it's not not at all that i mean it just it's it's a it's the the contrast between even a lieutenant in the navy's existence now and his spouse and what susan borman was going through is just amazing to me yeah i agree and it was again just another thing that impressed me so much about her and all of the other wives that just did it they they had the same mentality as their husbands it's like this this is an important thing and this is my part and and i will do my part and i won't complain i will just suck it up and do what needs to be done so we'll accelerate through the first part of his career so we can get to the nasa part which is basically the uh the meat of the story yes um gets jets doesn't go to korea for which he's very frustrated so he misses the war yes long story short winds up going to test pilot school doing very well and get selected for which class of nasa astronauts was this was this the second class so you have the mercury seven and then the second class includes frank borman yes yeah yeah frank was part of the the what they called the new nine so frank became an astronaut in september of 1962 and you know it it's it's interesting because frank didn't apply to be an astronaut he was actually hand-picked by general curtis lemay who's you know iconic and and his is a great story in of itself but um frank was picked by the air force and the only reason frank wanted to be an astronaut was that he wanted to get into combat and he thought this was going to be the best way um to beat the russians i mean he had been at edwards during that whole century series of fighters i was a real kind of the the the apex of test flight for uh you know back in the in the 50s and 60s so you know frank kind of became an astronaut just because he wanted again to get into you know he missed out on korea um he actually told you know lisa that was you know the great one of the great regrets of his life that he actually wasn't in combat so he felt this was the best way to beat the russians so let's remind the viewers and we've dealt with this in a few other episodes the area 51 episode and basically anytime i deal with ufos project blue book just how intense the cold war was at this time and that's what informed the space race it was a head-to-head competition with the soviet union as you guys point out in this book they were winning at certain points you know spacewalking and different things and and so frank being the ultimate competitor and as you said michael you know he missed the war so this is basically his way to fight the russian horde and so again this is what drives him in such an intense way to not just do the job but to excel in everything okay so they move where they go from edwards to houston where was it they moved from when they joined nasa yeah when they left will edwards you know jager told him chuck yeager was frank's boss and said he was basically destroying his air force career so they went right from edwards um to houston in the in the fall of 1962. so that's an interesting point right so this choice which seems so antiseptic and self-evident now did come with at the time the matrix was very complicated so here's a guy who has a very viable air force career you know i mean he could have made general officer he could have been the chief staff who knows right he was number one in everything that he ever did and so no less than chuck yeager says you know and he's if infamous famously was not selected for the astronaut program because he was not a college grad right which is documented in both the book the right stuff and the movie yeah and so he's got a kind of a problem with this whole nasa thing chuck does and he puts it to frank you're you're making the wrong choice basically is what he says john right yeah and frank told uh you know general yeager and not so many words but frank has said this to you know many people throughout his career that you know jager didn't know his ass from third base so um frank knew he was doing the right thing and he had uh susan's full support and uh off they went to uh you know begin training at nasa for his uh gemini flight so again they moved from this desert third world existence in the greater edwards area which is still kind of living in you know kabul or someplace i mean there's not a whole lot in edwards even today but in fact what cracked me up when i i haven't been there too many times but the dishes from the main gate to the runway is still like another 15 miles you know um so he moves to houston they moved to houston how many kids do they have by this point two okay so they have two kids yeah okay and uh but it's still not a very luxurious life when they get to houston no and and in fact nasa didn't have anything set up the one thing that susan was used to and all the wives were used to is when you get to base there is some structure and you are told you know go here for this and go here for that and there's there's some support nasa had nothing so these women had to figure out where they were going to live and they developed a whole community at el lago but they they were the ones who had to do it all and they had to get their homes built they had to get they had a swimming pool built for their their children to use and they were the ones who basically did all of that and created that community because nasa had nothing in place for them so fighter pilots tend to marry type a you know women let's just say and so to your point lisa these spouses are not going to just sit down and not improve their lot and so far as they had the means to do so yeah right uh because at nasa's feet there was nothing that was going to be solved for them and they they figured this out like pretty quickly right away um so that came with the goodness of what you talk about swimming pools and different things but there was also this part that this insidious sort of metaphysics that starts to take hold in in certain other spouses and it manifests itself in a whole bunch of ways so we'll get to that so what was frank's first job at nasa at the time deke slayton was his boss and he put him in charge of boosters for the gemini program so that was really frank's first job and then um you know deke saw that frank and lovell had you know there there was a lot in common between those two guys i think deek you know famously said if you tell boorman and level to take the hill level will think about it he'll make sure he's got a plan and borman will be out of the hole before you finish telling them what the mission is so that's why he decided that you know might be a good idea to pair these guys up on the first long duration flight gemini flight to prove that humans could stay in space for it was going to take at least 10 days to go to the moon and back so they decided to put you know uh lovell and borman in a in the gemini capsule which is is like putting two cockpits of two a4s together you know incredibly small and let them circle the earth for 14 days and see how that worked out so they actually did the the first rendezvous they actually didn't dock but they rendezvoused with wally shira who is in gemini six i believe so they flew within like a foot of each other so let's remind the viewers because i was reminded reading the book that the the nasa space program to the apollo program was a building block all to putting men on the moon right in accordance with president kennedy's sort of famous edict will do the other things or however he said and do the hard things and put a man on the moon by the end of this decade and so start with mercury then as you said michael gemini was to prove that we could stay in space for more than just 15 minutes or whatever um but each mission was built on the previous one towards this thing which is called land on the moon and walk around and and so forth and so on and so gemini was phase two and then apollo was uh the the phase three part and this is what really does inform frank's involvement in frank's focus and frank's challenges when frank was scheduled to fly and command apollo 9 um but then the apollo one fire happened um claimed the life of his best friend ed white and gus grissom and roger chaffee and that changed the whole trajectory of frank's you know career and so or at least his his part in apollo because i submit and i you know other people have said this and told lisa this from the apollo program that no no frank borman no you know man on the moon by 1970 you know the nasa put frank in front and and led the investigation into the fire frank also was sent to north america and down in california to lead the redesign of the block 2 command module so it just makes sense so we're gonna when they found cia learned that looked like the russians had plans to send a manned mission around the moon before the end of 1968 that they picked frank to to command that apollo 8 mission and moved him moved him up to uh moved him from apollo 9 down to eight so i want to do a deeper dive on the apollo 1 investigation but lisa let's pivot to focusing on susan's because these things exist in parallel like michael was just saying um so there was some evidence of some challenges during his gemini mission uh there's a lot of obviously tv focus and you know cameras parked on your lawn and that sort of thing and and she was sort of doing some some cries for help even then uh that were kind of going unanswered yeah i mean she got criticized for the gemini flight uh that famous photo of her turning away and holding on to her boys when when the gemini seven launched and it just made national headlines so she kind of got pegged as the scared wife instead of the proud wife and i i thought her rebuttal was so classy because she did write an article to the newspaper and just said i'm i'm a wife who who loves her husband and is concerned for his safety and i can't pretend otherwise so i was just being real instead of fake and there were a lot of women obviously who related to that but she did get criticized and it's kind of how she's been represented because she was so she wore her heart on her sleeve and it was it was very challenging and this is the most untested untried technology that frank had ever been involved with so she was a smart woman she understood what the risks were and the risks were high but they again nasa had no support for the spouses they were just expected to be there as you say be stoic like you know jackie kennedy kind of look and exactly no emotions and as we're talking about here she you know she she flinched or she showed some emotion or some idea that she might have been scared and pegged the scared wife yeah so it's hard to in this day and age where or even during the shuttle program right to tell a young person just what a national event the launch of a nasa mission was in those days right i mean that was must watch tv we'd get out of school if we were at school we'd stop class and watch it on the tv um if we had tv in our classroom or we all gather in the cafeteria and watch it on a little tv but this was a big deal each gemini mission each apollo mission was a big deal and so the astronauts were like the beatles you know and and so we knew who each one of them was they were national celebrities you ask a 15 year old hey can you name one astronaut now they would be unable to right um so we need to just certainly my core audience is old enough to understand what i'm talking about but i want any of our younger viewers to just understand just how bright these kliq lights were and how little to no support susan boerman had and the other spouses had and they all sort of managed it in different ways i love the line that gene ceremony's wife said um about what was the one about martinis or what was her line well she she had given this really um wonderful kind of speech about what it's really like to be an astronaut's wife and it was so well delivered that it kind of made national press so that was the one time her husband said wow you're you're getting more attention right now than i am but she her rebuttal to that was i can do anything with three martinis and a couple of valium it's like wow that's right that's your mother's little helper you know kind of uh era mad men 60s quintessential survival thing and again let's just paint the landscape the pop culture piece right so we've already said the beatles but there's also a vietnam war going on yeah it's where women's right is is still not a thing right era is is kind of percolating a little bit um roe v wade is i guess just happened and you know the things that we take for granted in terms of equality and social norms back in this day were not established right so as much as the astronauts were pioneers so were these wives in terms of how do you be the support mechanism for this incredible unprecedented not just an astronaut but this public figure yeah you know and again some of this is mentioned in in the right stuff about you know the mercury astronauts who some did it right some did it let's just say wrong in terms of leveraging their celebrity um obviously frank borman's a straight arrow he's like a john glenn kind of guy where you know he's not going to be a rock star and he's focused right um so michael you were talking about apollo 1 the horrors of apollo 1. a very gruesome mishap and i would invite the audience to listen to the actual uh audio of that but probably not because it's uh it is very graphic uh how these guys died i think the only good news is they probably died of of uh asphyxia and not from burning um but this was a very gruesome mishap where the three astronauts were killed in a flash fire on the launch pad doing a test run it wasn't even something that was designed as a point towards the airpla or the rocket actually launching so as you mentioned frank gets the lead so his best friend and other two colleagues have died and the nasa program is on the verge of getting shut down because this is the confluence of a whole bunch of stuff you know funding is at risk they're not sure that they can do it without killing more guys and the russians are now taking the lead in a big weather like well they already won right so everybody's kind of ready to just throw their hands up and as you said without frank borman singularly it wasn't just you know deke slayton couldn't have done this any of his other colleagues wally sherrock could not have done this jim lovell couldn't have done this without frank both leading the investigation and going to north america as you said to redesign the cockpit or the the capsule this doesn't happen you know think about the entire country every american knows of apollo everybody is watching every step that they take there's 400 000 americans working on this program there's 20 000 subcontractors to nasa 20 000 so pretty much every corner of american society is in some way involved in apollo everybody is watching so this fire that happened at the end of january in in 1967 just derailed everything it was a simple you know plugs out they call it the plugs out test communications test on the pad and um they know where the fire started probably started under gus grissom seat they don't know how it started frank you know they would never be able to say this exactly how it started but um those men um died you know uh very tragically you know with they knew that uh you know gus grissom was famously interviewed saying you know it's it's likely that someone is going to die we're doing really dangerous stuff here we have you know a rocket that's weighs 6.2 million pounds and you know even it's got you know six million parts so that fire you know had the uh everything that could go wrong went wrong and could have derailed and ended the whole program because nasa was still behind in their mind and they didn't know what was going on in in russia um they could have really uh you know that's why they put so much emphasis into getting this program uh back on track and they knew that frank borman was the guy he was you know he wasn't gonna mess around in terms of he wasn't gonna um you know he's a hard taskmaster and he's the epitome of a test pilot and engineer and he is going to get it done and and his you know his family sacrificed a lot for him to be away for those nearly two years while he did the investigation and was redesigning that block to command module and that's the point is this is zero sum so while frank is focused on basically america winning the space race or the race to the moon in any case his family is paying a heavy price susan's emotional state is getting more and more uh dire um and and she's becoming a a serious alcoholic i mean i guess she always was an alcoholic but it's now manifesting itself in a way that is becoming problematic and so frank is is lisa is the right word oblivious to all of this at that point yeah and really actually susan didn't start drinking in earnest until ed died and she because they were so close with the whites um pat was her best friend and she would go over every night after because the boys were older at this point so they were kind of you know doing their own thing and she would sit with pat every night and essentially started grieving almost in advance because in her mind if this could happen to ed he was the poster boy of what an astronaut should be he was he was bigger he was stronger than frank he was incredibly intelligent like he was the guy the all-american astronaut and it was the first time that susan thought my husband won't come out of this she had always just put that to the side and just believed in frank and his ability to handle any situation but when ed died and she sat with pat night after night and that's when they started drinking more it just all hit her like this will happen to me this is going to happen to me but there was no outlet she's not talking to a therapist she's not you know she's got just she and her circle let's just say suffering in silence because they had to that's what they viewed their duty their role obviously these americans they understood how important their husband's work was um and uh so she didn't want to be the the issue she didn't want to be something that derailed anything and but this is additive right it just keeps it's not if it's not dissipating it's just starting to build up and build up and build up over these years um so let's fast forward to frank's mission so he's he's the lead for apollo 8 which was the mission to actually go around the moon not land on the moon but actually circle on the moon and that's where the title of the book comes from and so what were the details of that in terms of frank first michael and then let's talk about uh the the way it affected susan and i'll turn to lisa so michael what were some of the things that frank had to deal with during the preps and the actual execution of that mission well usually the the lead up to any mission there's about 18 months of training and preparation these guys had four months so they learned about um they got word from the cia in august of 68 that the russians were planning to do a hail mary flight around you know just to go orbit the moon their launch window was in uh november and i think it ended on december 7th so frank and his crew had four months to train to train to fly um they're going to be the first astronauts first human beings ever on the largest rocket that ever flew so the the saturn v so we're talking about a rocket that's you know this as tall as a 36 story building and um they're going to be the first ones to fly it uh the saturn 5 had flown two unmanned uh flights to prove it out the first one was highly successful the second rocket although it made to orbit limped into orbit and there was a lot of damage from from a pogo the pogo effect um during that flight so when it came time for frank to fly and as lisa mentioned after ed's death she was convinced that here we're going to do something that you know no one has ever done before frank's going to command the first you know human mission on a saturn v they're going to be the first humans to leave earth's gravitational influence they're going to fly to the moon if they get there they have to enter orbit on the far side of the moon so we're not going to know for 40 minutes whether they've you know this computer technology has worked and they've the guys at mit have got it right and they've got into orbit successfully they could have crashed on the far side they could have been flying out into deep space so everything about this mission was the first and susan was convinced that uh frank wasn't gonna come home chris kraft said there's a 50 50 chance of this mission being successful so uh right after um they they launched on december 21st on the summer on the winter solstice of uh 1968 susan sat down and uh began to write uh frank's eulogy and and frank had also written a letter to the family uh in the event that he didn't make it back which uh is very poignant so michael you point out two things that are super important one is it's you cannot overstate the enormity of of the saturn v craft you know and and i visited nasa during the shuttle program when i was the editor of approach magazine in the early 90s and they had a satir five sitting on its side and and they made a point of showing you just how gigantic in terms of thrust and size and and my parents live not too far away from from the cape there and we've we've been there when they did you know like spacex will launch a rocket and it you know sort of seems kind of amazing and huge but you can imagine the thunder associated with a saturn v launch for that entire central florida area i just can't even conceive of it um and and so in terms of a human undertaking this is will never will never see it's like again for one thing the other is when we talk about as you mentioned we didn't know what would happen when you get to the dark side of the moon you know the other side in terms of the computing power and what the engineers had programmed because as we like to say our phones have more computing power than the saturn v program did you know even more than the shuttle did but uh you know what a flyer this whole thing was you know so everybody was postured for failure so lisa what were some of the things that happened during this actual mission in terms of the focus again the kliq lights are on white hot yeah didn't nasa work some drug deal with life magazine that gave them exclusive access and the wives didn't really get any say in it right to michael's point about you weren't resourced in terms of look and clothing and you know you had to be a style conscious but you were on you know working on three or oh for pay and and so again we didn't figure this out the the wives had to figure it out for themselves so how was her mood her demeanor and the support mechanism during this crucial mission well she chose not to actually go to the launch and uh watched it from home probably because she didn't want the backlash that she got from the from the gemini flight and yet she still had to invite not just life magazine taking photos of her but also a documentary team of filmmakers were in with the camera just zoomed into her face she hadn't slept she as we mentioned was convinced that frank wasn't coming home and my heart breaks every time i watch that footage because you just see this woman who is desperately hanging on to anything she can to get through it but she is absolutely terrified and she's surrounded by a whole bunch of people who are cheering and you know all excited about the launch and she is just convinced that frank is going to burn up either right when the launch happens or get lost in space and it's so clear the difference between her demeanor and everyone that's around her and it's um again her being real and being authentic but it she was absolutely terrified and she looked she looked like she was just heartbroken well we're just not wired for this you know and and so it's going to manifest itself in some way but the public circa 1968 had no capacity for this sort of empathy that she needed yeah right this is very binary and so the public's like hey your husband's a famous astronaut and you know your life is great and that's it the rest is things beyond our understanding or even desire to know about you yeah right that's just too much it's like when somebody says have a nice day or how's it going you're like well i'm glad you asked because uh it's not going that great you're like no i don't really want to know yeah yeah um and and so i just remember you know this monolithic view we all had of nasa and i was a young school boy i was in what third grade um and you know my dad was a marine corps pilot and he'd sort of do some explaining of what's happening and that sort of thing and there was no way for us to lo guy even wonder what so what's his wife going through yeah you know because my mom had suffered through my dad in vietnam and so forth and so on it was just like put on a good face shut it you know suck it up and you know the rest is your problem to deal with you know um and so he gets back from this mission and now just to sort of fast forward a little bit he starts to realize that she's not doing so good and he makes a call to basically you know because he could have been one of the guys to walk in the moon yeah um and he makes the call that okay my wife and and not my career so talk to us about how that aha moment came about well he actually as you mentioned he was chosen to command apollo 11. neil armstrong was his backup for apollo 8 and when frank turned it down then they asked neil to command apollo 11. but frank in his mind his mission was to beat the russians and he he did it so he didn't need to prove anything else because that was his mission and he did recognize that his family was suffering he knew he hadn't been home barely at all in in the last few years so he chose to to turn down really the most like iconic uh mission to the moon so that's certainly laudable and uh obviously frank is a man of great character um and he knows what matters in life and and family is what matters um so he made the call the other thing not just susan's mental health and her alcoholism is getting worse the boys were kind of getting into trouble they were known as the bad kids in the neighborhood um and this reminds me of my life growing up on a marine corps air station and the general's kids were always the wildest ones because their dad was never around you know and he had attended to his career um and and so i i i get it and so did frank go right to eastern airlines was that his first job out of the uh out of the nasa program or how did he how did he wind up being uh the president of eastern airlines well he stuck around because he got his air force wings and in 1950 susan pinned his wings on and then so he wanted to get his 20 years in so he stuck around until 1970 he was actually in the oval office with president nixon during the apollo 11 landing to advise the president and him and susan actually became uh close friends with the nixons but he left in and nasa in 70 and then um and then joined uh eastern airlines so he kind of jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire you know they moved to miami which is where the headquarters of eastern airlines is and i can hear a lot of the young people like what's eastern airlines right it was this airline that existed back in our day there was a major carrier you know and it was one of the big ones and uh so he he doesn't start as the head but he flees up pretty fast and uh again they realize that okay now dad's sense of duty is kicking in again he's trying to keep like he saved nasa he's trying to save eastern airlines and they're having labor disputes and you know he's it's not an easy gig and of course because frank is wired the way he is and so mission driven he didn't really understand the challenge that he was taking on when he took that job and because he just had to be with susan she actually wanted to stay back in houston their their youngest was finishing high school and he begged her to come to miami and so edwin actually lived with his parents that last year and fred was already at west point so all of a sudden susan is now in miami with no friends no support no boys that she needs to be strong for and that's kind of when everything really starts to unravel because frank is never home again and she's by herself and really with nothing to to to be present for strong for and that's when the alcoholism really really becomes prevalent yeah that that part of the story jumped out at me where frank kind of demands that she come to miami fully knowing that the family situation probably best if she stayed in houston um and so he he struck me at that moment as a little bit needy um like you know his like his emotional needs uh were were you know pry one um and so again being the dutiful wife she does it um but as you mentioned lisa this is just the beginning of of an even darker period so ultimately how does he discover just how bad this has become for susan well susan was again because she was such an amazing woman and it was so hardwired and to her to be there for everyone no one actually knew that she had a drinking problem she was amazing at hiding it and she made sure that like frank told me he had never seen her drunk but she was a very functional alcoholic but when it all kind of came to a head is um she had been by herself uh frank was somewhat at a different eastern um i think he was in possibly new york at that time doing whatever he was doing for eastern and so she was by herself in the apartment and fred was coming home for from west point for a visit and obviously that would be something that she would be over heard in the phrase over the moon about but she the alcoholism was becoming so bad and she was drinking all day because she was lonely and she had no one to really talk to or be with that actually fred came home and found her totally unresponsive on the on the couch and uh he had to call and they came and got her and that was when it really was apparent to everyone in the family that there was a big problem and she then ended up going to a facility um kind of a rehab facility but it was more about just healing healing all of the stuff that she had been pushing down her whole life and she was gone for four months right it's again we're talking about this is the 1970s um so we don't have the gucci rehabs that we have now um and so this is kind of when we say healing facility this is a mental hospital yes right and and uh it feels kind of one flew over the cuckoo's nest ish um at this point so frank realizes he's putting his wife into a mental hospital under the auspices of alcoholism and emotional whatever so you can just imagine the challenges to him again he's he's got to come to terms that his life isn't perfect and and that's not something that these guys are generally good with and then she has some uh moments where she's like demanding to get let out and they're not ready to let her out so that's another thing that frank has to like you know dropping your kid off at daycare and they don't want to go yeah it's always challenging um so those those moments really jumped out at me it like another lesson and look life is not easy you know even if you're frank borman you know and uh and you got to deal with it um and although ultimately they did but wow this period particularly was was just when you thought they had nothing left to do except enjoy the autumn of their lives it got super challenging yeah it did and just like most things that are really challenging because of the way that they both approached it uh they they became so much better for it not just personally but also as a couple and that was when frank had to do something he had never done before which is is go internal he had to talk about his feelings um he had to acknowledge all of the ways that he had contributed to susan's suffering the negligence the mission above all else mentality and really come to terms with some of these things that he just he realized he took her for granted he took for granted that she was always going to be this strong stoic woman who would always support him in everything he did and he didn't understand the price she paid for that until this happened to his credit he did cop to all those things yeah because he didn't have to you know right and and men of lesser character uh high profile men of lesser character would not have done that yeah and and so as we know and as you describe in the book frank borman is a great man over everything else and this is really a a love story an unorthodox one but a but a love story at its core um so susan died she passed away this last september yeah okay and frank is still alive and yes you guys mentioned is he still flying his airplane or is he is he not now been grounded because he was until very recently i mean what is he 94 95 years old now and he was still flying until very recently yeah he actually um it was heartbreaking he called me it was right after susan passed and the two things he loved in life was her and flying and he he sold his plane right after she she died but he had been flying right up until that point and he turned 94 this march so he he's just he's amazing he's amazing so the book is called far side of the moon apollo 8 commander frank borman and the woman who gave him wings the author is lisa jorgensen her husband michael is the president of myth merchant films guys thanks for coming by the channel and thanks for writing this book thank you so much for this was so much fun thank you thanks ward all right that's going to do it for this episode check the links below for merch including where you can get the slava ukrainian t-shirts all prophets support the ukrainian military in their fight against the russian invasion also if you enjoy my channel and you have not read the punx trilogy you're kind of missing a big part of the picture because you guys asked for it you can now get punks war wing and fight not just in print but also as a kindle and an audio book so check the links below for all of those details and in the meantime i look forward to talking to you again soon [Music] you

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 78,473

Keywords: Ward Carroll, Frank Borman, Apollo program, NASA, space, Air Force, West Point, test pilot, F-14 Tomcat, Top Gun, astronaut, moon landing, Neil Armstrong, mental health, addiction, alcoholism, rehab

Id: dD3j88DiKPY

Length: 47min 59sec (2879 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022