1965 NASA "Corned Beef" Archive
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GUEST:
My family has been kind of indirectly associated with the space race for years and years. My father was a manager of a hotel that was partially owned by the seven original Mercury astronauts. And through that friendship, he got to meet a lot of the other people and become friends with different astronauts. And subsequently some stories came out of it, and ultimately, that's why we're here. Yes, I have a collection of a lot of different astronauts and autographs and all that, but I think it's, it's the story behind it that really made it interesting for us. Interesting childhood for my sister, myself. There'd be dignitaries coming in because it was so fresh and new to the U.S., that at one point we were told to try to keep the kids of Wernher von Braun busy. Went bowling with his kids.
APPRAISER:
You've got an incredible collection of items here, and I only chose a few for us to actually look at today.
GUEST:
Yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER:
We've got this great photograph of your dad in front of the hotel. But it's got something interesting on the sign here. "Try our cornbeef, it is out of this world."
GUEST:
There are stories that... kind of, came and went a little bit over the course of, you know, a few decades now. They've changed a little, but my father has recently passed, and there's no longer going to be another congressional investigation. But what had happened was, Dad and John Young were talking about the food that they had to eat-- emulsified, reconstituted stuff in bags and packages, that... And Dad said, "Well, John, if you'd let me know, I could have catered it from Wolfie's," which is a great delicatessen in the Ramada Inn here in Cocoa Beach. Well, out of that, these two got together, and they tried to figure out a way that they could get a couple of corned beef sandwiches into space. From there, Dad and John went into the kitchen, took a full thick slice of corned beef, and then they started wrapping it in cellophane. They'd go to the top of a six-foot ladder, and they would drop it. "Okay, it's going to hold together." Well, there was no Ziploc bags back then, so this is how it had to be done. Well, I think with Wally Schirra's help, they were able to get a couple of corned beef sandwiches into the flight suit front pockets. And the joke was going to be, to Gus, basically-- he knew nothing about it. Gus Grissom and John Young were going to be on this flight. He was going to say, "Gus, what do you want on that corned beef sandwich?" Well, they pulled it out, and the sandwiches just disintegrated. There was caraway seeds and crumbs and everything everywhere. And nobody probably would have heard anything about this had that not gotten back down to ground. They had the capsule on the top of the carrier, and as they were taking photos, there was crumbs and stuff everywhere. Well, out of that, there was a congressional investigation that, I don't really know where it went too far. But things were changed around to keep my dad's name out of it at that time.
APPRAISER:
Well, it's fantastic, I mean, one of the aims of the Gemini 3 mission was to test different foods in space. And to have a corned beef sandwich brought on board along with all these emulsified glycerin-covered foods...
GUEST:
Sure, yeah, yeah.
APPRAISER:
I can see why the government might get a little upset and decide to do a little bit of an investigation about it.
GUEST:
Stuff was put in jeopardy, no doubt, but thankfully, no harm, no foul on that one, so...
APPRAISER:
Well, it seemed to go over pretty well. And it wasn't the last time that John Young brought a corned beef sandwich into space. On his first Space Shuttle mission...
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
They actually had corned beef sandwiches on board. You've got this great letter from Alan Shepard to your dad on the Ramada Inn stationery. It says, "Carlos, I needed a corned beef sandwich, and all I got was baloney."
GUEST:
It kind of corroborated what transpired.
APPRAISER:
Yeah. We also chose two photographs.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Both signed by Neil Armstrong, dedicated to your father and mother.
GUEST:
Mom and Dad, yeah.
APPRAISER:
And to you.
GUEST:
Correct, yeah.
APPRAISER:
As a kid. This is an incredible collection. The photograph, it's wonderful that it has Wolfie's, where the sandwiches supposedly came from. And then we have this great letter on the letterhead, signed by Alan Shepard to your dad. We estimate, at auction, this would sell for between $3,000 and $5,000.
GUEST (laughs): Too fun, too fun.
APPRAISER:
Just for this great little slice of astronaut history.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And now we have these two other photographs here. These are some of the earliest signed photographs, with the NASA background, of Neil Armstrong. We estimate, at auction, each one would sell for between $7,000 and $10,000 each.
GUEST:
Chair, please. (laughs) Very good, very good. No clue it was going to be anything like that.
APPRAISER:
It's a great young picture of him. And we look at this entire collection. There is so much here from the early astronaut days. As a whole, we'd estimate around $40,000 to $50,000.
GUEST:
Wow, wow. Thanks, Dad.
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