The Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom Museum at Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, Indiana honors its most famous son and one of America’s greatest space heroes. The museum was dedicated in July 1971, ten years after Gus’s first flight, and four years after his death. The exhibits cover every phase of Grissom’s life with the centerpiece being the Molly Brown Gemini mission capsule, on display behind a plexiglass shield. Other exhibits include Gus’s spacesuit and the helmet he wore during his July 16, 1961 Mercury Liberty Bell 7 flight. These, along with many associated “Space Relics”, stir childlike wonder for every star-gazing visitor, regardless of age.
What stands out in the museum, particularly to Hoosiers young and old, is the ordinariness of this extraordinary man from small-town Indiana. Virgil Ivan Grissom was born on April 3, 1926, to Dennis, a signalman for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and Cecile Grissom, a homemaker. Virgil’s interest in flying began in elementary school where he started building model airplanes. His nickname was born after a friend, reading his name on a scorecard upside down, misread “Griss” as “Gus.”
As a youth, Grissom joined the Boy Scouts where he developed a lifelong love of hunting and fishing. His first jobs were delivering newspapers for The Indianapolis Star in the morning and the Bedford Times in the evening. In the summer he picked fruit in area orchards and worked at a dry-goods store. He also worked at a local meat market, a service station, and a clothing store in Mitchell. Grissom graduated from Mitchell High School in 1944. In his spare time, Grissom spent time at the Bedford airport. Gus’s love of aviation blossomed when a local attorney who owned a small plane took Gus on flights and taught him the basics of flying.
During World War II, Grissom enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet while still in high school, completing his entrance exam in November 1943. Grissom was inducted into the U.S. Army Air Forces on August 8, 1944, at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. Gus was assigned to Boca Raton Army Airfield in Florida where he spent most of his time as a clerk before his discharge in 1945. After, Gus took a job at Carpenter Body Works, a local bus manufacturing business. He quickly tired of “putting doors on buses” and, using the G.I. Bill for partial payment of his school tuition, Grissom enrolled at Purdue University in September 1946. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1950. He reenlisted in the U.S. Air Force, earning his pilot’s wings in 1951, and flew 100 combat missions during six months of service in Korea.
In August 1955, Grissom was reassigned to the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. In October 1956, he entered USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and returned to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio in May 1957, after attaining the rank of captain. Grissom served as a test pilot assigned to the fighter branch. In 1959, Grissom received an official teletype message instructing him to report to an address in Washington, D.C., wearing civilian clothes. The message was classified “Top Secret” and Grissom was ordered not to discuss its contents with anyone.
Of the 508 military candidates who were considered, Gus was one of 110 test pilots whose credentials had earned them an invitation to try out for the U.S. space program. Grissom passed the initial screening in Washington, D.C., and was among the 39 candidates selected to undergo extensive physical and psychological testing. On April 13, 1959, Grissom received official notification that he had been selected as one of the seven Project Mercury astronauts. And as the popular saying goes, the rest is history.
The museum features exhibits touching on every phase of Gus’s life and career. Exhibit highlights include Gus’s high school diploma, a glittering array of Gus’s cufflinks, tie-tacks, tiebars, wife Betty’s charm bracelet (including a dime that makes one wonder if it was one of the famous dimes Gus carried into space), most with the NASA emblem or familiar Mercury/Gemini capsule design, Gus’s Mitchell High School report cards (Gus didn’t do well in Latin), Gus’s NASA hardhat and ID tags, plaques and paintings, his posthumous Medal of Honor and Arlington National Cemetery coffin flag.
I spoke with Mark Young, Property Manager at Spring Mill State Park, about the displays. “We rotate the displays periodically. We were lucky to have received many items directly from Betty Grissom, more than we could display all at once,” Young says. “Betty Grissom sent boxes of stuff to the museum. Every so often, a large box would arrive and we never knew what was in them.” When I asked Mark, who has been at the museum for 30 years, if he was the lucky one who got to open them, he replied, “Well sure. I’m the property manager, so I was in on all of them.” Rank does indeed have its privileges.
I asked Mr. Young if there was any one item in the boxes of discovery that particularly stands out in his memory. He answered without hesitation, “The flag that was on Gus’s casket. That was the item that moved me.” Other items in the museum collection include a “Mercury Way” street sign that Gus stole, a cowboy hat given to him by President Johnson, and a corned beef sandwich, preserved in a block of lucite, commemorating the one that Gemini co-pilot John Young snuck aboard the Molly Brown and shared with Gus in space.
Mr. Young then walked me over to the display case where Gus’s report cards were on display. “The museum gets 15,000 school kids every year, usually in the spring and fall. I love showing these to students. I tell them to look closely and you’ll see that Gus was an average student. Which is proof that you don’t have to be a scholar or a standout student to accomplish great things in life.”
I asked Mark Young if he was here when the capsule arrived at the museum. “No, the Gemini capsule came here in the 1970s, before my time.” Today, space items are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auctions houses. In 2017 an Apollo 11 contingency lunar sample return bag used by Neil Armstrong on the moon to bring back the first pieces of the moon ever collected sold for $1.8 million (including buyer’s premium) at Sotheby’s. I asked Mr. Young if he thought the museum’s collection could be replicated today. “No,” was his quick reply, “When these objects came to the museum back in the seventies, no one (at NASA) really knew what to do with them.”
When speaking about the Betty Grissom donated items, Mr. Young explained, “I think she liked the way we had the museum set up. She appreciated how we presented her husband.” Mark continues, “Betty’s last public appearance was at the rededication of the museum in 2009. While everyone was up front listening to the speakers and watching the program, instead of sitting in her VIP seat in the front row, Betty sat right here (pointing to the back of the room) answering questions from visitors.” Betty Grissom died at the age of 91 on October 7, 2018, in Houston, Texas. Mr. Young noted, “Betty was loyal to Gus to the end. Fiercely loyal.”
Fifty years after Gus’s death, Betty Grissom told a New York Times reporter that when told of her husband’s death, she said that she had “already died 100,000 deaths” being married to an astronaut. Fellow Mercury Astronaut Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations responsible for NASA crew assignments, had already picked Gus to be the first man on the moon prior to his death in Apollo 1. The museum offers a 12-minute movie (on a 17-minute loop) that tells Gus’s story in a way that stirs the soul of every visitor. In the film, legendary Apollo Chief Flight Director Gene Kranz caps the “what-if” argument by saying, “Gus wanted to go to the moon.” There is little doubt that had Gus Grissom survived, he would have been considered America’s greatest astronaut. Spring Mill State Park Property Manager Mark Young would argue that Gus still is.
After visiting the museum it seems exceedingly proper that you continue your day by visiting the Gus Grissom Boyhood Home at 715 W. Grissom Avenue in Mitchell. The street was renamed in his honor after his Mercury flight. Here you’ll find the home where Gus lived with his family from age 2 through high school. It is now a museum, open every Saturday for tours, that provides a glimpse into Grissom’s life before he became an Air Force pilot and eventually one of the Mercury 7 astronauts. It is decorated with period furnishings, including many original to the Grissom family. The house includes cabinets and woodwork made by Grissom’s father, Dennis David Grissom. A number of artifacts on display belonged to the future astronaut — his first shotgun, a knife and sheath that he made in shop class, etc.
The Gus Grissom Rocket Monument, located at 409 S. 6th St. in Mitchell, stands at the site of his former elementary school. The 44-foot-tall limestone depiction of a Mercury Redstone rocket was dedicated in 1981 and towers over the site where Gus’s school once stood. The stately memorial provides a detailed history of Grissom’s life on the launchpad panels surrounding it. As you drive through the quiet streets of Mitchell, Indiana take a moment to imagine it as Gus did: A small-town kid building airplane models on the porch while dreaming of flying to the stars.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
