Tumult on Earth

While Gemini 4 was in one of its last revolutions around the earth, Command Pilot Jim McDivitt allowed as how he and Co-Pilot Ed White were a little tired but feeling fit. From Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, Gemini 3 Astronaut John Young joked that the tough part would come back on earth.

Last week McDivitt and White learned what Young meant, as they orbit ed through a series of tumultuous receptions that ran the gamut of a hero's homecoming -- from brass bands to bronze medals to a free trip to Paris. Both took it with weightless ease.

"Call Me 'Doctor.' " After a cordial reception in Houston early in the week, the pair zipped off to Chicago. No fewer than a million whooping people jammed curbstones and upper-floor windows and let fly with a blizzard of ticker tape that all but buried McDivitt and White as they rode in a parade down State Street and Michigan Avenue. That over, the astronauts flew to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where each was solemnly awarded a newly created honorary degree --a doctorate of astronautical science. Already both had been nominated by the President for promotion from major to lieutenant colonel, and after receiving his new degree, Ed White quipped: "I can hardly get used to people calling me 'Colonel' -- and I know in a million years I'll never get used to people calling me 'Doctor.' "

After separate trips to their home towns for more welcome-back festivities, McDivitt and White arrived in Washington. In a White House garden ceremony, the President pinned on both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exceptional Service Medal --the agency's second highest award (the highest, the Distinguished Service Medal, was given only to the first six astronauts).

"Share the Thrills." Lyndon praised the pair publicly as "the Christopher Columbuses of the 20th century," then whispered to them privately: "You are going to spend the night and have dinner with us. Down in my country that's the way we show our affection."

After another parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, receptions in the Senate, another reception in the House and another with foreign diplomats at the State Department, the astronauts--still displaying no obvious signs of wear--got further traveling orders from Lyndon Johnson.

"I want you to join our delegation in Paris and go out among the friendly peoples of the earth to share with them the excitement and thrills you experienced," said Johnson. Still smiling, McDivitt and White--accompanied by their wives--hurried off to the Paris Air Show, where the Russians had captured all eyes with Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and a huge 250-ton transport. Vice President Hubert Humphrey escorted the U.S. space twins and was himself scheduled to meet with Charles de Gaulle. No sooner had the group landed at Le Bourget airfield, where Charles Lindbergh touched down after flying the Atlantic in 1927, than the astronauts went through their umpteenth press conference of the week. Naturally someone asked McDivitt if he wanted to be the first man on the moon. "Definitely yes," he replied. Then he looked at White and said, "But together with my buddy."

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