LITTLE ROCK — An Air Force flight suit that Bill Pogue wore 50 years ago sold at auction Nov. 6 for $620.
It was the last of about 400 items the former astronaut has given to benefit charities. He may donate a couple of more small items, if he can find them.
“My house is pretty well cleared out,” said Pogue, 80, who lives in Bentonville and Florida, depending on the season. “I’ve been giving them stuff for 10 years. The things I have left I want to keep for my kids.”
Pogue said $620 seemed like a good price for the flight suit, which sold at the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation’s annual auction at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
He wore the suit while hewas an instructor at the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California in 1965-66.
“I figuredthey’d get about $150 for it,” he said. “It was not ‘flown.’”
In space-memorabilia jargon, “flown” means it’s been to outer space.
William R. Pogue spent 84 days in space - from Nov. 16, 1973, to Feb. 8, 1974 - on Skylab 4, the third and final manned trip to the laboratory orbiting in space. Pogue served as pilot of Skylab 4. It was a 34.5 million-mile flight, making 1,214 trips around the Earth.
Pogue is originally from Okemah in east-central Oklahoma, but he has also lived in rural Madison County and Bella Vista. Although he’s a snowbird now, Pogue still considers himself an Arkansan.
Jerry Matulka of Richardson, Texas, who bought the flight suit, thought he got a pretty good deal.
“I thought it would go for $1,000 to $1,500,” said Matulka, 52.
By comparison, a spacesuit worn for training by Apollo astronaut James Irwin sold at auction Nov. 16 in Dallas for $53,775. That suit also had not been flown into space.
But that was a very different suit, said Mike Constantine, who operates the space-memorabilia website Moonpans.com.
“I think Bill Pogue’s suit went for a reasonable price, considering it was a U.S. Air Force suit and not in any way aNASA space suit,” Constantine said via e-mail.
Constantine said it was rare for an Apollo spacesuit like Irwin’s to be offered for sale. The Apollo program landed the first humans on the moon, of whom Irwin became the eighth in 1971. The auction of his spacesuit, held by Heritage Auction Galleries, didn’t include the helmet, gloves or boots.
“Overall, space memorabilia prices have been steadily rising,” Constantine said. “I have noticed quite a few of my buyers are not space collectors, but investors who have become weary of the stock and housing markets.”
Matulka has bought eight Pogue items at auction, including the Bible he carried aboard Skylab for $7,000 and a green plug from a urine sample bag for about $2,000. The plug had served as a Christmas tree ornament on Skylab.
“It makes me feel good,” Matulka said. “I know I’m not doing this for money. I just hope it can inspire people in future generations. ... These were my heroes, my idols, my role models growing up.”
Matulka said he’ll get a mannequin for the flight suit and display it in his home. He already has one mannequin in his house. It’s wearing what is known as a Russian “penguin suit” because of the way it made cosmonauts waddle when they walked.
Matulka said he may lend Pogue’s suit to the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas at some point. He hopes to eventually open a museum for the 70 or so astronaut items he has purchased at auction.
Pogue gave most of his memorabilia to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which awards $200,000 in college scholarships annually to students who excel in science or engineering, according to its website, astronautscholar ship.org.
The foundation’s eighthannual auction, held earlier this month, raised $125,000 for scholarships. Auction items included memorabilia, autographs and vacations with astronauts, and a Grand Caymans scuba dive trip with moonwalker Buzz Aldrin went for $7,250. Established in 1984, the foundation has awarded about $3 million in scholarships. More than 80 astronauts help the foundation.
Pogue said his gift that brought the most - $19,000 - at a foundation auction was a utility light that had landed on the moon with Apollo 14 and more recently was mounted on a plaque.
“Anything that had been to the moon and back will bring a really good price,” Pogue said.
Pogue served on the support crew for the Apollo 7, 11 and 14 missions.
“I got a letter from Alan Shepard signed ‘Al,’” said Pogue, referring to the first American sent into space. “They got $500 for that. He was inviting me to join the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.”
Jerry Carr, who was commander of Skylab 4, said he also gives items to the foundation to be auctioned. Carr said he has no problem with other people buying space memorabilia.
“There are people who want to spend their money to do that, and that’s OK by me, particularly when the money goes to a good cause,” he said. “Most of us give some of our memorabilia to that foundation so they can be auctioned off for scholarships. The rest we keep for our families.”
Carr was Pogue’s neighbor in Madison County. Originally from Southern California, Carr said he lived in Northwest Arkansas for 23 years before moving to Manchester Center, Vt., four years ago.
Pogue said many astronauts brought things back after their trips into space.
“We weren’t supposed to bring anything back, but I thought ‘the heck with that, everybody was bringing stuff back from the moon,’” he said.
Pogue said he and other astronauts returned with small souvenirs, usually personal items they had taken with them into space.
Pogue said he still has a few Snoopy stickers that were adhered to tissue dispensers on Skylab 4. One day, while riding an exercise cycle on the space station, Pogue noticed a sticker with Charles M. Schulz’s cartoon beagle floating by in the gravity-deprived atmosphere.
“We took our Swiss Army knives and started peelingthese decals off everything,” said Pogue. “To calm my conscience, I never sold them. I would give them away when people were having a fundraiser. ... I did not want somebody to say I brought it back to make money. It made money but not for me.”
Pogue said the first Snoopy sticker brought $50 at auction. Later, they sold for hundreds of dollars each.
Pogue is writing his autobiography, titled But For the Grace of God. The book, which he is self-publishing, should be in bookstores by March.
Pogue has written three other books: An Astronaut Primer, published in 1982; How Do You Go To the Bathroom in Space?, a book for children co-written by his late wife, Jean, and published in 1985; and Space Trivia, published in 2003. His wife of 30 years died in December.
Pogue, a retired Air Force colonel, said the last three winters were just too cold for him in Arkansas, so he bought a second house on Merritt Island, near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“I never expected to live this long,” said Pogue, who has walked in space twice. “I was in a high-risk business for 25 years. ... Here all of a sudden, I’m 80 years old.
“I accepted Christ as my savior when I was 12 years old, and I thought He had something for me to do. ... I didn’t dwell on the danger aspect of what I did, I just went ahead and did it.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 11/26/2010