The four astronauts of NASA‘s Artemis-2 mission are getting used to life on Earth again. The crew splashed down in the Pacific after their flyby of the Moon. The astronauts took photos of the lunar surface, including one spot called the Ocean of Storms. One astronaut from Mobile was supposed to get a lot closer than that. Clifton Williams was meant to land there during Apollo 12 in 1969.
“Okay, I guess you all know why you're here today and why we're here,” said Deke Slayton during a NASA press conference on October of 1963. He was one of NASA’s original “Mercury-7.”
“We'd like to introduce the new group of 14 astronauts that we've been in the process of selecting for about the last four months,” he said
NASA was gearing up for the space race against Russia. The winner would put a man on the moon first.
“I'm Major Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr, United States Air Force, from Montclair, New Jersey,” said Buzz Aldrin, who would walk on the Moon with Neil Armstrong during Apollo 11
“I'm Captain Bill Anders, Kirtland Air Force Base New Mexico,’ said Anders, who would circle the moon on Apollo 8. Ten more men would introduce themselves with this one bringing up the rear…
“Captain CC Williams, United States Marine Corps stationed at Quantico, Virginia, hometown, Mobile, Alabama,” he said. Williams went by the nickname “CC.” He was the first Astronaut from Alabama.
“Are all the wives of the chosen astronauts in favor of their having been chosen as astronauts?" asked a reporter during the press conference.
Clifton Williams was NASA’s first bachelor astronaut. That made his answer to that question a little tricky.
“Well, none of my lady friends have voiced any objection to my getting away from here,” said Williams, which prompted laughter in the audience.
“CC liked everybody. Everybody liked CC.” said Beth Landsche.
She and Williams met before he became an astronaut. He was a Marine and she was working her way through college as a water skier at the Cypress Gardens park in Florida.
“Actually, we met in the hometown of North King, North Carolina, where he was based in his first white base squadron. I guess they call it anyway. I was in college, and then I moved later to Cypress Gardens, and he used to fly down there to see me,’ she recalled.
CC and Beth took their time, and talked it over, and were married in July of 1964. The Williams started raising a family as NASA inched its way toward the Apollo moon landings. And, he was working his way up the ranks of the Astronaut corps.
When Williams joined NASA, the U.S. was just getting started in space. The one person space capsules used during Project Mercury were replaced by the two seater Gemini craft. NASA was making a stair-step progression toward Apollo and the moon. During the launch of Gemini 10, Williams was on the back up flight crew Alan Bean, another astronaut from the 1963 group.
“He and Alan liked each other very much,” Beth Williams recalled. “I think it went very well. They were both kind of special guys. It went well.”
Then, Williams was named to the prime crew of Apollo 12. He would be the lunar module pilot. Beth Williams says that meant after the astronauts landed on the Ocean of Storms, her husband would walk on the moon.
“It was, it was the beginning of a lot of travel and species,” Williams said. “His father was quite ill during that time, and he would be going to the Cape and coming back, and he'd stop to see his dad come on to Houston. It it's, it was a special time.”
Williams' parents were living in Mobile in the mid 1960’s. His father had heart problems. Along with training for his Apollo 12 moonwalk, there were more interviews. One from Scholastic Magazine was on a six inch wide vinyl record. It would be the last time Clifton Williams would answer questions from the public…
“An American astronaut who said he wanted to be the first on the moon, was killed Thursday when his T-38 jet trainer plowed into a hilltop near the Florida Georgia border. Marine Corps Major Clifton C Williams Junior, age 35, was a member of the nation’s third generation of astronauts was flying alone from Cape Canaveral to Houston Manned Space Center, by way of Mobile, Alabama, where his father was reported ill.
Williams radioed a distress signal about 2 PM. And, 10 minutes later, a helicopter rescue crew from Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Georgia arrived at the scene on a plantation near the Miccosuki, Florida, 15 miles north of here. The plane disintegrated and the body disintegrated with it, said Air Force major Joe Johnson of Moody The plane drove straight down and plunges between Pine trees about 100 feet apart without touching them. A board of inquiry headed by the first American spaceman Navy Captain Alan B Shepherd was named to investigate the crash by James E. Webb administrator, of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration. The closest Williams came to rocketing to Space was as backup pilot for last year‘s Gemini 10 mission. Since then, he specialized in working on the Lunar Module. That’s the craft that is to carry two Apollo astronauts for all landing on the moon.”
Tuscaloosa News-- October, 6, 1967
“Oh, I recall it vividly. Yeah, I do,” said Beth Williams. “People came to the house, and people were very you know, all of them gathered together, the astronauts and all the friends and NASA people. And it was typical of the way they did. They gathered, you know, 'what do you need?' Everybody worried and took care of.”
“I didn’t miss the damn moon, I missed him,” she said.
But, the Moon was waiting and NASA had to press on..
Alan Bean, the man Clifton Williams partnered with on the back-up crew of Gemini 10, would take his place and walk on the moon. Even though CC wasn’t aboard Apollo 12, Beth Williams followed the moon mission on the news.
“Well, it's just pride that we could do such a thing," she said. "I mean, I wasn't involved, but it was you. Certainly, when you live close to it, you realize how much effort the whole engineers, everybody put into it, and it was that's why it's exciting. It's exciting to see something come to fruition that a little bit is dangerous, and yet they pull it off well.”
That included the moonwalk her husband didn’t get to do.
After Apollo 12, Alan Bean made speeches about walking on the moon. Beth Williams says there one thing in those talks that bothered her.
“He would always say that he replaced CC Williams. And, I called him one time when I was aware of what he was doing, and I said, Alan, stop that nonsense. You did that flight. It's yours. Please leave CC out of it. He doesn't need that. He doesn't need that, and neither do I,” she recalled.
Bean never mentioned it again. But it did come up more one time…
“And, anyway, at his (Alan Bean’s) funeral, his best friend said, ‘we have one more thing to say, because he never said it after that.’ And he said, ‘Alan wanted to remind you all that he replaced CC Williams,’ and if they were looking right at me, I knew what they were doing,” Beth Williams said.
No one has set foot on the moon since 1972. NASA may try it again in 2028 with Artemis four.If those moonwalkers ever make it to the Ocean of Storms, they may find Clifton Williams’ Naval Aviator flight wings and his silver astronaut’s pin. That’s where Apollo 12 moonwalkers Pete Conrad and Alan Bean left them in 1969.
