Family members instead requested the artifacts be returned in a private meeting in Brevard County today.
Betty Grissom, 75, has long said NASA covered up what really happened in the launch pad fire that killed her husband and fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee during an Apollo 1 dress rehearsal on Jan. 27, 1967.
She said her review of the investigative records showed the fire was no accident and might have been sabotage, but that NASA did not want the public to know it.
"I feel very sad about the dispute Mrs. Grissom has with NASA," said retired astronaut Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander who is now chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation which secured the loan agreements with the families when it was running the Hall of Fame. "I think she's way off base in her allegations of how her husband died. We all were very fond of Gus. This makes all of the astronaut corps a little bit sad that this has to come to pass. She's on some kind of crusade."
It's unclear precisely why the Grissoms want back the space artifacts that for years have been on loan to the museum, officials said.
The Hall of Fame, on State Road 405, and U.S. Space Camp Florida recently was taken over by Delaware North Park Services, the same company that runs the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex for NASA.
The company soon began contacting the astronauts, families, museums and other agencies that had items on loan at the museum.
Rick Hensler, spokesman for Delaware North at Kennedy Space Center, said the company was being cautious in making sure all of its loan agreements were up to date. That's when the Grissoms told the company they wanted the mementos back.
That included the spacesuit, which Betty Grissom donated to the Astronaut Hall of Fame believing that it belonged to her husband.
NASA spokesman Robert "Doc" Mirelson said the agency has paperwork showing the suit belongs to the government and that Gus Grissom borrowed it for a school show-and-tell event at some point and never returned it.
Mirelson said NASA never pressed the issue because the Grissoms had made sure the suit was on display at a legitimate museum.
NASA became concerned a few months ago when the museum's future was in doubt. The hall and Space Camp were foreclosed on by SouthTrust Bank of Alabama for millions of dollars in unpaid debts.
The bank bought the property at a foreclosure auction earlier this year and then leased it back to Delaware North, which has been working to refurbish exhibits and then reopen the museum as a complimentary tourist attraction to the Kennedy Space Center complex.
With the changes, NASA wanted to make sure the spacesuit was going to end up on display and also had concerns about whether it was being preserved using the best possible technology available, Mirelson said.
The agency intends to pick up the suit sometime soon from the hall and send it to experts who can make sure it is properly preserved, he said. At that time, he said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will decide where the spacesuit should be displayed for the public.
It could be returned to the Hall of Fame or to Kennedy Space Center, but Mirelson said it also could end up someplace like the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, where a lot of other government memorabilia from the space race is displayed.
The Grissom pressure suit is the one he wore on his suborbital flight aboard the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule on July 21, 1961. It was the second and final suborbital flight.
On Nov. 8, NASA sent Delaware North a letter stating, "the Mercury 'Liberty Bell 7' spacesuit, boots, gloves and helmet worn by Virgil I. 'Gus' Grissom are the sole property of the U.S. Government and that Delaware North Parks Services of Spaceport, Inc., should not release these items to any parties without written direction from NASA."
Hensler said the Grissoms will be given other items they lent the museum about 10 years ago, items that do belong to the family. Among them are the flag that draped his casket during his Arlington National Cemetery funeral, a lapel pine and a Mercury tie tack.
In 1965, Grissom served as the command pilot of the first manned Gemini flight, which made three orbits of Earth. He was the backup command pilot for Gemini 6 before being named to the crew of the first Apollo manned mission, the one that ended with the flash fire at Launch Pad 34.
Lovell said he is concerned that if the Grissoms retrieve their items and NASA sends the spacesuit elsewhere, Grissom will be in the Hall of Fame but the facility will have none of his memorabilia on display.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of
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