Slayton, Donald Kent (“Deke”)

(b. 1 March 1924 in Sparta, Wisconsin; d. 13 June 1993 in League City, Texas), astronaut who was among the original seven selected for Project Mercury, the program that achieved the first American manned space flights.

Slayton was the first-born child of Charles Sherman Slayton, a farmer and laborer, and Victoria Adelia Larson, a homemaker. He grew up with his four brothers and sisters on the family dairy farm near Sparta. Often an older half brother and half sister stayed at the farm as well. Living through the Great Depression meant hard times for the family, but, as Slayton proclaimed in his autobiography, “Being on a farm, we never worried about starving to death.”

In 1942 Slayton graduated from Sparta High School and immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. During World War II he completed fifty-six missions over Europe and seven over Japan. After the war he returned to the United States as a B-25 instructor, until discharged from active duty in 1946.

Taking advantage of the GI Bill, Slayton enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1947. While a student he worked at various part-time jobs and doubled up on his courses. As a result, he graduated in 1949, a year and a half early, with a B.S. degree in aeronautical engineering. He then moved to Seattle to become an engineer for the Boeing Aircraft Company. Although he disliked the work he was doing there, he stuck with it until 1951, when the Korean War intervened. Eager to serve his country once again, he returned to Minnesota as a reservist in the Minnesota Air Guard. While waiting for his call to active duty, he applied for and received a commission as captain in the U.S. Air Force.

From 1952 to 1955 Slayton served as a fighter-squadron pilot and wing-maintenance officer at various posts in California and Germany. While stationed in Germany he met Marjorie Lunney, a secretary from Los Angeles, whom he married on 15 May 1955. Later that year they moved to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where Slayton had been assigned as a test pilot. On 8 April 1957 their only child, Kent Sherman, was born. The family remained at Edwards until 1959, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected Slayton as one of the original seven astronauts for Project Mercury.

Along with the other Mercury astronauts, Slayton completed an intense training program as preparation for the rigors of space. After this training NASA assigned him to the fourth space flight, intended as the second to achieve orbit, but Slayton never completed the mission. In May 1962, two months before his launch date, NASA grounded him when doctors identified a recurring irregular heart palpitation known as idiopathic atrial fibrillation. Sorely disappointed, Slayton watched from mission control as other astronauts journeyed into space.

Convinced that he had a better chance of flying as a civilian, Slayton resigned from the Air Force in November 1963 and rejoined NASA as assistant director of flight-crew operations. Three years later NASA promoted him to director. In this position he supervised astronaut training and selected the flight crews for each mission. After learning in July 1970 that his irregular heart palpitation had ceased, Slayton proposed himself for the crew of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). In January 1973 NASA announced that he would indeed be a member of the crew. He spent the next two-and-a-half years in training, working with simulators, and learning Russian.

On 15 July 1975 Slayton and his fellow astronauts lifted off from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At age fifty-one Slayton had become the oldest astronaut to journey into space at the time. Unfortunately his parents never lived to see this success. Charles Slayton had died in 1972, followed by Victoria in 1974.

The American and Soviet capsules rendezvoused in orbit on 17 July 1975. The two crews docked their spacecraft, conducted several experiments, and held a joint news conference. Two days later the spacecraft separated and Apollo began its journey back to Earth. During splashdown, a toxic gas was accidentally released into the capsule, causing the astronauts discomfort but no serious harm. While examining Slayton for possible lung damage, doctors found a small lesion on his left lung. At a hospital in Houston, doctors removed the lesion and determined that it was benign. Slayton realized that he had been fortunate. As he stated in his autobiography, “If they’d found it before ASTP, I never would have been allowed to fly.”

After recovering from surgery Slayton began to work on the Space-Shuttle program as manager of the Approach and Landing Tests task force. Then in 1978 he became manager of the Orbital Flight Test program for the first four shuttle missions. He officially retired from NASA in 1982. He had stood by NASA for over twenty years, through the good times and bad, from the first manned space flights to the first shuttle missions.

In 1978, having grown apart personally, Slayton and Marjorie decided to separate. In 1983 their divorce became final. On 8 October of that year Slayton married Bobbie Jones-Osborn, a divorced mother whom he had met while they both worked at NASA. In his autobiography, Slayton was characterized by Bobbie as “a wonderful, loving husband and a kind and generous father.”

Slayton began working as a consultant for Space Services, Incorporated (SSI) in 1982. He helped design and build its Conestoga rocket, which launched successfully in September 1982 under his supervision. After this success Slayton became president and, eventually, vice-chair of the board for the company. At one point SSI proposed launching cremated human remains into permanent orbit. The idea was later abandoned, but not without causing some damage to the company’s reputation.

In 1991 Slayton began to lose his balance. Eventually doctors diagnosed brain cancer as the cause. Slayton died of the disease on 13 June 1993 at his home in League City, a suburb of Houston. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered on his family’s farm in Sparta.

Although born in the Midwest, Slayton proved himself a true Texan. After moving to Houston to work for NASA, he remained in Texas for the rest of his life. A rugged outdoorsman, he took full advantage of the considerable fishing and hunting opportunities there. Persistent and dedicated, Slayton proved his devotion by staying with NASA even when they grounded him. By participating in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, he helped promote peace and proved that perseverance can breed success.

Slayton cowrote several books on the space program and his involvement with it. We Seven (1962), written by the seven Mercury astronauts, provides personal insight into the early days of the American space program. Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon (1994), written by Slayton and Alan Shepard with Jay Barbree and Howard Benedict, covers the space program from its origins to Slayton’s historic Apollo-Soyuz mission. His autobiography, Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle (1994), was written with the assistance of Michael Cassutt. Offering a narrative account of Project Mercury, Tom Wolfe’s best-seller The Right Stuff (1979) provides a more objective view of the early space program and the astronauts involved with it. Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo, The Race to the Moon (1989), includes discussion of Slayton’s key role in that program. Obituaries are in the New York Times and Houston Post (both 14 June 1993).

Brian Daniel Quigley