Scott Crossfield 1921-2006

The year was 1987. My father and I were traveling to Minneapolis for the weekend. As I stood in line at the ticket counter of the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, I noticed a man a few places in line in front of me. My first thought was that he looked like Walt Disney. Then I had the oddest sense of déjà vu. I seemed to remember seeing this man before recently, perhaps on T.V., and thinking that he looked like Walt Disney then too. I wracked my brain trying to figure out where I had seen this guy. It was driving me nuts. I asked my father, “Does that guy look familiar to you?” My dad just shrugged.

A few minutes later we took our seats aboard the aircraft. My dad took the window seat, and I had to sit in the middle seat. The Walt Disney-looking guy soon sat down in the aisle seat. I was trying to muster up the courage to ask him who the hell he was when I saw his name engraved on a brass plate on the front of his briefcase. It read: Scott Crossfield. I remembered where I had seen him.

“Jesus Christ Dad, that guy is Scott Crossfield!” I practically had to yell at my father over the whine of the jet engines warming up.

“No way, really?”

“Look at his briefcase.”

My dad looked at the briefcase, and then a transformation came over him. I wasn’t sitting next to my dad anymore. I was sitting next to his inner child.

I need to break from this story to tell you about my father. My dad loved everything about flying. When my father was in his 20’s he bought and restored half a dozen World War II fighter aircraft, and he flew them in airshows around the country with a group called The Confederate Air Force. One of the founders of the Confederate Air Force was astronaut Gus Grissom. My dad talked about Gus Grissom like he was a god. He also talked with the same reverence about the one other astronaut he had met, Wally Shira.

I think my dad’s first dream in life was to be a military pilot. And as a military pilot, my dad would have done anything to fly the fastest thing he could possibly fly. In other words, my dad’s ultimate dream would have been to be an astronaut. But that could never happen. The military wouldn’t take my dad. He was blind in one eye. So restoring World War II fighters was the closest thing he could get to being an astronaut. My dad settled for a P-51 Mustang, the fastest propeller driven aircraft ever built. The dragster of the sky.

My dad’s dream was so strong that I took it on. I spent much of my childhood dreaming of being an astronaut. I devoured every bit of information about the space program. I think at one time I could name every American astronaut. Imagine how I felt to be sitting with Scott Crossfield on one side of me and my father on the other.

“Quick dad, what rank is he? Is he a colonel or what?”

“I don’t know. It seems that I remember him being in the Navy. I think he is a Navy commander.”

I couldn’t risk using a title without more certainty.

“Uh, Mister Crossfield, excuse me I couldn’t help noticing who you are. I have a videotape of the PBS documentary “Spaceflight” at home and I was just watching it last week. You are interviewed extensively in that program. I just wanted to say what an honor it is to meet you.” I didn’t bother to mention that he looked like Walt Disney.

He looked a little startled.

“Well it is nice to meet you too, uh…”

“Chris Kavanaugh, sir, and this is my father Dan Kavanaugh. He is a big admirer of yours as well.”

My dad’s inner child reached out to shake his hand.

“It is nice to meet you both.” He said.

The uncomfortable silence that followed was interrupted by the stewardess lecturing us on all kinds of valuable information like what to do in the event of a water landing during the flight from Oklahoma City to Dallas Fort Worth. Just in case we crash into Lake Texoma, I thought. It could happen.

By the time she was through, Scott Crossfield had leaned his head back and shut his eyes.

Great, I thought. He isn’t going to talk to me at all. He is going to sleep all the way to Dallas. Wonderful.

I sat there for several minutes and watched him sleep. I went through three of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages. Denial – He is not really sleeping. Anger – Goddammit, can’t he see how important it is to talk to me. Bargaining – Maybe if I wake him he won’t be that pissed off. I was somewhere between depression and acceptance when the drink cart lady came by and said “Care for something to drink?”

My dad and I both gave our drink orders and then Crossfield opened his eyes, “I’ll have a cup of coffee.” He said.

Crossfield straightened himself in his seat, then he turned to me and said, “What documentary did you say you saw me in?”

“Spaceflight. Have you not seen it?”

“No, I remember them interviewing me though. I haven’t seen it. Is it good?” He asked.

“It’s really good. Martin Sheen narrates it. It has tons of footage of you being interviewed and it is spliced in with some amazing old footage of the X-15. They showed footage of the X-15 breaking in half on landing. . .”

Crossfield chuckled. “That was quite a day.”

“. . .they also showed footage of when the X-15 caught on fire with you in it.”

“Yeah. A man risked his life to save mine when that happened.” Crossfield’s eyes were twinkling now. “I guess I’ll have to get a tape of it.”

I noticed my father straining to hear our conversation. Unfortunately, the whine of the engines was too loud. I knew he could only hear bits and pieces. It served him right for taking the window seat.

“So where are you flying to today?” I asked.

“I am going back to Washington, D.C. I had some work in Oklahoma and now I am headed home.”

“So what are you doing these days?”

“Well, I work for Congress. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the National Aerospace Plane. . .”

I nodded.

“It’s designed to take off from a runway, accelerate to hypersonic speed, and propel itself into orbit. Well, I am sort of an intermediary between Congress and the contractors on the project. Some of the work is being done in Oklahoma.”

“How close are we to having an Aerospace Plane?” I asked.

“We are about seven years away from testing prototypes.”

“Wow, that’s unbelievable.” I said. Apparently, I was right.

“So, I am dying to ask you a question. . .What does Scott Crossfield think about the Challenger disaster?”

The Challenger disaster happened in January of 1986, a little over one year before our conversation. The wound was still fresh. Crossfield winced.

“It was fucking criminal is what I think.” Crossfield said. “People should go to jail.”

And so it began. The real Scott Crossfield poured out.

“How they could put a school teacher on that rocket. . . It’s unbelievable. Those astronauts knew the risks, but a school teacher? It’s criminal.”

“When Reagan came out and declared the Space Shuttle operational, what a joke. Operational. Mark my words, one day history will show that Kennedy set the space program back 50 years by taking it out of the hands of aeronautical engineers and handing it to the fucking missileers.”

Apparently “missileers” was a derogatory slur of missile engineers.

“Operational. The missileers idea of operational is if 80% of their rockets don’t blow up on the launch pad, its operational.”

He shook his head.

“We are sitting in an aircraft that was designed and built in 1969 - 1969!! – and you don’t see a bunch of assholes standing around the runway applauding, do you?”

I laughed. “No, you have a point.”

I have no idea how Crossfield knew in what year our plane was built. The McDonnell Douglas DC9 was manufactured from 1965 – 1982. I suspect he was guessing and bullshitting me a little bit.

I had read the book “The Right Stuff,” by Tom Wolfe. Wolfe spent a lot of time describing the amazing egos of these test pilots. He described them like brain surgeons, how they had to be completely lacking in humility to do what they do. Tom Wolfe had Scott Crossfield pegged.

“So have you seen the movie “The Right Stuff?”

“No. And I never will. But I did read the book, though.”

“Why won’t you see the movie?” How could you not see a movie in which an actor plays you, I wondered.

“Some friends of mine saw it and they said the movie made Pancho Barnes look like a worn out old alcoholic. There is no way I’ll ever watch that. That woman was a saint.”

“Hmm. But did you like the book?”

“Yeah. The book was alright. He got a few things right in the book.”

“Did you ever get interviewed by Tom Wolfe?”

“No. I have never talked to the man. But some of my friends did.”

“Well, the movie especially made it look like there was this big rivalry between you and Chuck Yeager. What do you think about all the attention he’s been getting lately?”

He laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll never forget watching Johnny Carson, and he introduced Yeager as ‘the greatest pilot that ever lived.’ Shit, there were dozens of pilots at Edwards that could wax his tail any day. The greatest pilot that ever lived.” He shook his head.

“You mean to tell me that there was nothing special about Chuck Yeager?”

“Well, he did do one thing that impressed me. Yeager put an F104 into a flat spin. Those planes were really easy to put into a flat spin. Anyway, most pilots would have punched out, but Yeager thought to lower the landing gear. That provided enough drag to lower the nose and get him out of the spin. That was pretty clever. I was impressed with that.”

“Well, with all those ads he’s doing these days, Yeager must be making a fortune.” I said. “If I were you, I’d call his agent. Maybe you and Yeager could do an ad where you are bantering about who the best test pilot is.”

He laughed. “No way. You’ll never see me selling spark plugs.”

The short flight to Dallas ended way too soon. I said goodbye to Scott Crossfield and thanked him for making my flight so interesting. As soon as he was out of sight, my father's inner child turned to me and said “You will now repeat every single word he said.”

Rest in peace, Scott Crossfield.