Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 22

2 Secton 2 Crucajo Tribune. Thursday. October 25. 1379 Christina Winter Staff wntar waiting until they are older to have children. Mrs.

America: Oh, how you've changed DF MBS AMERICA IS beautiful, smiling, wholesome, talented, and everybody's ideal of young womanhood, then what does Mrs. America represent, besides another excuse to bold a beauty pageant? Somehow, the Image of Mrs. America, for those who even have one, blurt together with vague news clippings about the Mother of the Year, and candidates for the old television show "Queen for a Day." The contest has been held only sporadically since its heyday In the '50s, but it's not so hard to put it all together in your bead. If Miss America is the perfect young lady, then Mrs. America is the perfect married lady.

The profile from the past is easy enough to call up: a hard-working hausfrau, a living example of the consummate wife and mother, always blessed with an inordinate number of offspring, none of whom ever got busted for anything, and a husband inclined to run over at the mouth about "the little woman." In addition to having the house spic and span each morning by 9:30, she was given to car pooling, kaf-feeklatching, and packing up and moving the family at the drop of a corporate Once she was inclined to knock around in a printed house-' dress, which she updated to a polyester pantsuit somewhere along the way. Picture her as I Love Lucy, Mrs. Cleaver, Harriet Nelson, and Donna Stone without the yuks. The last time she saw her own name was when she addressed a Christmas card to her parents. AND HOW WOULD a panel of Judges go about selecting this ideal Well, no one ever expected her to get up there on the runway and scrub a toilet bowl clean, although in the early days of the contest, she was turned loose in a model house and given points on the poise and dignity she exhibited while rearranging the furniture.

Not much need to see if she can sing or dance either. Personality has always been a good criterion. She should show a lot of it, 'cause everybody's mom has personality, and besides, a charming wife is a big asset to a man who wants to get ahead in the business world. And after all, that's what being a especially an ideal is all about, right? And, well, of course there had to be a swimsuit competition; what's a beauty pageant without swimsuits? But everybody understands that they take into consideration that these girls are not kids anymore, and nobody expects a woman who has borne children to have a great figure anyway. EXCEPT THAT THIS year's Mrs.

America isn't se typical. Oh, she's still bubbling over with the kind of personality that melts corporate bigwigs, and she's still parading around in that incongruous combination of high heels and a one- piece swimsuit to show she has "kept her figure." But into this entirely predictable mold has been poured a collection of women who do not exactly fit the stereotype of the wedded counterpart of Miss America. For many of them, the corporate bigwigs they are trying to impress with their winning personalities are their own bosses, not hubby's. Swimsuit competition is no big deal, because they're physical fitness nuts who jog every morning before work, and besides, they may not have any stretch marks to worry about because they may not have had any children yet Today's Mrs. America is much more typical of the Mrs.

in America today than even the pageant planners may have anticipated. This year's winner is Carrie Gabriel, a financial planner for a major corporation, with a background in real estate, life insurance, and managing a women's health club. She has been married for 10 years, but has no children. She's young, articulate, and dresses more like an executive than a beauty queen. "Yes, this year's contestants are something of a departure from the old image of what Mrs.

America should be like," she concedes. "But we pretty well fit the bill according to what today's contemporary woman Is like. One-third of the contestants have no children at all, which fits in with recent surveys that show that about 30 jr cent of U.S. women are "I THINK THAT HAS been the hardest aspect from same of the traditionalists to accept A lot of the housewives I meet cant relate to toe fact that Mrs. America is childless, but they don't find a career outside the home much of a stumbling block anymore.

But the childless family is very definitely a part of today's lifestyle." The title Mrs. America could leave a little bit to be desired in today's modern vernacular, but this Mrs. America doesn't find the intruding offensive. "We don't like the dowdy image that goes along with being a and part of what we hope to achieve is to. show that a woman doesn't lose all her options as sooA as she puts on a wedding ring.

A married woman has a choice now, and she can be a successful executive, or she can be a 'professional' quality homemaker if that's what she wants. But she isn't a nothing." And so she travels around the country, husband in tow when be can get away, spouting the wonders of one of the pageant sponsors, the manmade fabric industry because modern fabrics free women from household drudgery and going on in a most liberated way about options and choices and the contemporary woman in a manner very much unlike her unmarried sisters in the beauty contest business. About the only way that a Mrs. America could be closer to the real thing in today's world would be if the contest were revamped entirely and titled Ms. Living Together America.

Cooper the Cool jockeys Faith 7 between naps Continued from 1st Tempo page nan' mind at a moment Ukt thitl Scarcely able to believe it themselves, NASA never supplied the answer. FOR THE ASTRONAUT the flight consisted of riding the rocket and, God willing, not screwing up. For the wife the flight consisted of the press conference. The questions they asked you were unbelievably simpleminded, yet there was no smooth way to field them. As soon as you touched one, it popped all over your face like bubble gum.

"What to in your heart?" "What advice do you have for other women whose husbands have to go through dangerous situations?" "What's the first meal you plan to cook for (Al, Gus, John, Scott, Wally, Gordon)?" "Did you feel you were with him while be was in orbit?" Pick out one! Try answering it! By now, when the other wives came around to the house of the wife during a flight, they were not there to hold her hand over the dangers her husband was facing. They were there to hold her hand over the television cameras she would be facing. They were there to try to buck her up for a true ordeal They liked to do the squarely stable routine. One of the wives Rene Carpenter was good at it would take the role of Nancy Whoever, TV correspondent, and hold her fist up to her mouth, as if she were holding a microphone, and say: "WE'RE HERE In front of the trim, modest, suburban home of Squarely Stable, the famous astronaut who has just completed his historic mission, and we have with us his attractive wife, Primly Stable. Primly Stable, you must be happy, proud, and thankful at this moment." And then she would shift her fist over underneath the chin of another wife, and she would say: "Yes, Nancy, that's true.

I'm happy, proud, and thankful at this moment." "Tell us, Primly Stable may I call you Primly?" "Certainly, Nancy, Primly." "Tell us, Primly, tell us what you felt during the blastoff, at the very moment when your husband's rocket began to rise from the earth and take him on this historic journey." "To tell you the truth, Nancy, I missed that part of it. I'd sort of dozed off, because I got up so early this morning, and I'd been rushing around a lot taping toe shades shut so the TV people wouldn't come in the windows." "Well, would you say you had a lump in your throat as big as a tennis ball?" "That's about the size of it, Nancy; I had a lump in my throat as big as a tennis ball." "And finally, Primly, I know that the most important prayer of your life had already been answered: Squarely has returned safely from outer space. But if you could have one other wish at this moment and have it come true, what would that one wish be?" "Well, Nancy, I'd wish for an Electrolux vacuum cleaner with all the attachments and they'd all crack up at the thought of what a dim lummox the Genteel Beast (the press) really was. Still that didn't make it any easier when your time came. MEANTIME, ALOFT, Gordo was having a hell of a time for himself.

Right after the liftoff he said to Spice up your business with the Gourmet widow, Dorothy, presented them with the Iven C. Kincheloe Award for outstanding professional performance, in the conduct of flight test The wire services devoted scarcely more than a paragraph to the occasion, and that they took from the handout. After all the Distinguished Service Medals, and the parades, and the appearances before Congress, after every sort of tribute that politicians, private institutions, and the Genteel Beast could devise, the Iven C. Kincheloe Award didn't seem like very much. But for the seven astronauts it was an important night The radiant Kinch, the great blond movie-star picture of a pilot, was the most famous of the dead rocket pilots and could have cut his own orders in the Air Force, had he lived.

There were aviation awards and aviation awards, but the Kincheloe Award for "professional performance" was the big one within the flight test fraternity. The seven men had finally closed the circle and brought together the scattered glories of their celeb-. rity. They bad fought for a true pilot's role in Project Mercury; they had won it, step by step; and Cooper's flight, on top of the others, had shown they could handle it in the classic way, out on the edge. Now they had the one thing that had been denied -them for years while the rest of the nation worshipped them so unquestioningly: acceptance by their peers, their true as test pilots of the space age, deserving occupants of the top of the pyramid of the right stuff.

Adapted by the edHms of The Chicago Tribune from "The Right SluT by Tom WoHe. Copyright 1B7S by Tom Wolfe. By errangemem with the pub-leher, Farrv, Streue end Glroux, Inc. sure they could learn anything about this during a 34-hour flight, given the naturally high adrenal ex-. citement of the astronaut.

They needn't have worried. 01' Gordo obliged by falling asleep during his second orbit, even though his suit was overheating and he had to adjust the temperature settings continually. GORDO WAS really something. He seemed even cooler about the whole thing than Schirra, and no-body had believed that possible On the 19th orbit, with three more to go, Gordo started getting readings of g-force buildups, as if the capsule had begun its re-entry. Sure enough, the capsule started rolling, just as it would have during a re-entry in order to increase stability.

The automatic control system had begun the re-entry sequence, even though the capsule was still in orbit and hadn't slowed down in the slightest. The electrical system was shorting out. On the next orbit, the 20th, the capsule lost all attitude readings. This meant Cooper would have to line it up manually for the re-entry. On the next-to-last orbit, the 21st, the automatic control system went out completely.

For re-entry Cooper would not only have to establish the capsule's angle of attack by hand, using the horizon as his point of reference, he would also have to hold the capsule steady on all three axes, pitch, roll, and yaw, with the hand controller and fire the retro-rockets by hand. MEANTIME, the electrical malfunction had done something to the oxygen balance. Carbon dioxide started building up in the capsule and inside Cooper's suit and helmet as well. "Well things are beginning to stack up a little," said Gordo. It was the same old sod-hut drawL He sounded like the airline pilot who, having just slipped two seemingly certain midair collisions and finding himself in the midst of a radar fuseout and 'control-tower dysarthria, says over- the intercom: "Well, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be busy up here in the cockpit making our final approach into Pittsburgh, and so we want to take this opportunity to thank you for flying American, and we hope we'll see you again real soon." It was second-generation Yeager (Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier), now coming from earth orbit Cooper was having a good time.

He knew everybody was in a sweat down below. But this was what he and the boys had wanted all along, wasn'tkit? They had wanted to take over the complete re-entry process become true pilots in this damned thing, bring her in manually and the engineers had always shuddered at the thought. Well, now' they had no other choice, and he had the controls. On top of that, during his final orbit he would have to keep the capsule at the proper angle, by eye, on the night side of the earth and then be ready to fire the retro-rockets soon after he entered daylight over the Pacific. No sweat Just made it a little more of a sporty course, that was all and Gordo lined up the capsule, hit the button for the and splashed down even closer to the carrier Kearsage than Schirra had.

ON SEPT. 28, 1963, the seven Mercury astronauts went to Los Angeles for the awards banquet of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. Iven Kincheloe's Guide To place your ad, call your Tribune representative or contact Sherry Jaffe at 222-4497. Turntothe (Chicago (Tribune Wally Schirra, who was serving as the capcom, "Feels good, buddy. All systems go." He kept adding things such as "Working just like advertised." The life sciences people, who finally had been allowed a few experiments since the flight was so long, were interested in determining the limits of adaptability to weightlessness.

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