Marilyn Lovell, who, as an object of fascination for the news media, the inspiration for film and TV characters and a figure in the history books, personified for many Americans the hardships and glamor -attracted to be an astronaut’s wife, died Aug. 27 in Lake Forest, Ill. He is 93 years old.
His death was announced by Wenban Funeral Home of Lake Forest.
Her husband, Jim Lovell, once the most experienced astronaut in the United States, captained perhaps the nation’s most dramatic space flight: Apollo 13. It was launched on April 11, 1970, with the goal of returning astronauts on the surface of the moon. for the third time. Mr. Lovell and Fred Haise are the designated moon walkers; Jack Swigert must remain in orbit.
Two days after the flight, however, an oxygen tank exploded, and the command module, the Odyssey, began to lose power. “Houston, we’ve got a problem,” Mr. Lovell reported (a statement that took some time to retell as “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”)
The crew aborts the planned moon landing and takes refuge in the lunar module, Aquarius, using it for the return trip to Earth.
The crisis gripped the world, with Ms. Lovell in the lead role as a wife and mother of four who watches the news on television to see if she is about to become a widow.
Those heady days are commemorated in Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13,” a 1995 film that earned nine Oscar nominations, including a best supporting actress nomination for Kathleen Quinlan, who played Ms. Lovell. (Tom Hanks plays Mr. Lovell.)
The film is based on the memoir of Mr. Lovell, “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13,” written with Jeffrey Kluger and later reissued in paperback as simply “Apollo 13.” The Lovells and their children were also characters in the 1998 HBO mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon.”
In those descriptions and others, Ms. Lovell turns the astronaut’s wife into a heroic archetype: the American housewife who accepts her husband’s work-imposed absences, sacrifices peace of mind for her great adventures and that of their country, confronts the possibility of his death with dignity as the nation looked on, and squeezed out of it all a life he found attractive.
Marilyn Lillie Gerlach was born on July 11, 1930, in Milwaukee, to Lillie and Carl Gerlach. His father runs a candy store.
As a freshman at Juneau High School in Milwaukee, he often made eye contact with a junior working behind the cafeteria counter to get a free lunch. One day, that boy, Jim Lovell, asked her to the junior prom.
Soon, he found himself spending time on the family porch, chatting with Jim’s mother as she launched homemade rockets from a vacant lot nearby. When he attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., Marilyn, after graduation, enrolled at George Washington University in Washington to be closer to him.
He typed his college thesis. A few hours after he graduated in June 1952, they were married in an Episcopal church in Annapolis.
Once upon a time, Mr. Lovell as a naval test pilot. In 1962, he was selected as one of the so-called New Nine, the second group of American astronauts (following the Mercury Seven), which also included Neil Armstrong.
The Lovell family lived in Houston near other astronaut families, a cozy neighborhood the press referred to as Togethersville. Several of the wives — including Annie Glenn, Betty Grissom and Rene Carpenter — became public figures in their own right.
On Christmas Day 1968, while on the Apollo 8 mission, Mr. Lovell, the first manned spaceflight to orbit the moon, Ms. Lovell opened his door to find a representative from Neiman Marcus carrying a large box with moon-themed decorations. Inside was a mink coat and a note that would later be made by The New York Times describe as “the most romantic card in the universe”: “To Marilyn from Man in the Moon.” Made by Ms. Lovell did her housework that day in pajamas and her new mink.
On that mission, Mr. Lovell named a triangular mountain on the moon’s surface Mount Marilyn. It will eventually serve as a landmark for astronauts, and in 2017, after campaigning by Mr. Lovell, the name is official acknowledged of the International Astronomical Union.
Although many astronauts and their spouses eventually divorced, the Lovells stayed together, despite the unusual stresses the family faced.
Ms. hid Lovell kept one of her pregnancies from her husband for four months, worried that if it became public knowledge, NASA would consider her pregnancy a distraction for her husband and prevent her from flying into space. . The success of his robbery came to distract him, however, making him wonder if his wife was not old enough to notice that she was pregnant, wrote Lily Koppel in her 2013 book, “The Astronaut Wives Club.”
Then there were those frantic days when it was unclear whether Apollo 13 would return safely to Earth. Ms. Lovell, like other astronauts’ wives, faithfully watched the television reports of Jules Bergman, the ABC News science correspondent whom they found reliable for unvarnished reporting. He gave Mr. Lovell a 10 percent chance of survival.
When the 12-year-old daughter of Ms. Lovell, Susan, becomes hysterical when she sees a priest at their door, Ms. Lovell found a way to comfort him. “Do you think the best astronaut one of us has ever known would forget something as simple as how to turn his spaceship around and fly it home?” he asked his son, according to the diary of Mr. Lovell.
Reporters with notebooks, microphones and televisions filled the Lovell family’s lawn and driveway. She called from President Richard M. Nixon: “I just want you to know, Marilyn, that your president and the entire country care about your husband’s progress,” he said. “Everything is being done to bring Jim home.”
As parachutes were seen on TV echoing from the spaceship, guiding it safely over the ocean, a pair of famous astronauts popped champagne in Ms.’s living room. Lovell, Mr. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. President Nixon called with a new message: “I want to know if you want to come with me to Hawaii to pick up your wife.”
He answered, “Mr. President, I want it.”
Emerging from his home wearing a red, white and blue striped dress to speak to reporters, he said: “Isn’t it a beautiful day? I am very grateful and humbled, thanking the men at Mission Control for making it possible for my wife to return to Earth.”
Later, Mr. Lovell in a marine company and in telecommunications. The family lived in Lake Forest for 40 years. He survived Ms. Lovell, with their children, Barbara Harrison, Susan Lovell and Jeffrey and James Lovell III; 11 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
No matter how difficult it is to be the wife of an astronaut, it made Ms. Lovell to live “a life of fascinating adventure,” wrote Ms. Koppel in “The Astronaut Wives Club.”
In an interview with Ms. Koppel, made by Ms. Lovell his time in Houston in one sentence: “It was the best year of my life.”
