Spent Night at Iowa Wesleyan - Saturday, May 18, 1963

I drove down to Iowa Wesleyan after work to visit Marilyn. It took an hour to get to Mt. Pleasant. They're on daylight time. Marilyn thought she better not take the time to come up to our house, so I'm staying down here for the night. Tonight a nice blind date, Tom Morrasen and I, Marilyn and her present boyfriend, and another couple tripled. We took Tom's car to Fairfield for pizza. Iowa Wesleyan kids are quite a lot like Park's. In some respects they're different. They have marvelous Saturday night suppers - steaks! (Delicious ones, too!) It feels good to be back in college life! My feature article was on the Journal front page.

West Chester's 1961 Mid-Prairie Graduates - Friday, May 17, 1963

I called Marilyn at Iowa Wesleyan tonight. I'm going to drive down after work tomorrow and either bring her back for Saturday night and part of Sunday or stay down there, whichever works out. Journal work went fine today. I should have a nice Saturday review page this week. Jim Young was at the root beer stand today so we were talking some. (He's married to Phyllis Crone.) Mrs. Stewart saw me in Bridges and wanted me to make a list tonight of all the West Chester kids who graduated from Mid-Prairie in 1961. I guess they want to invite us to the alumni banquet, though I'm not that keen on going. Marion probably heard me say something about "If I'd just graduated from West Chester I could be going to the alumni banquet," one time.

Cooper's Splashdown Was Flawless - Thursday, May 16, 1963

Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper's splashdown in the Pacific at 5:20 a.m., 115 miles southeast of Midway Island was perfectly flawless following his 22 orbits of the earth. There was some concern when the automatic re-entry device was lost on the last orbit, but he brought it in manually "right on the money," as John Glenn said. It was a wonderful climax. This afternoon at 4:00 I went out to North 5th to interview Henry Kiene, a retired farmer, who made three "mosaic" pictures entirely from different kinds of seeds. Two of them are on display at Gevock's. Bob had already taken a picture of one of them.

Astronaut Cooper's Liftoff Was Perfect - Wednesday, May 15, 1963

Cooper's liftoff at 7:00 this morning was perfect. He's supposed to "sleep" in space tonight. No wonder some people would never think of keeping a diary. It can be rather hard to think of anything different to write when you do practically the same thing every day - I suppose some people's lives are that way - they never "do" anything. It's interesting to have the experience of spending entire days doing only one thing. Until this time, nearly every day I ever spent was more "varied," rather than "concentrated."

Gordon Cooper's Space Trip Postponed - Tuesday, May 14, 1963

Gordon Cooper's one and a half day space trip was postponed this morning. They had a T-60 minutes hold when they couldn't get the gantry moved away from the space capsule (because of water in the fuel line!). The final postponement came with a radar failure in Bermuda. They'll try again tomorrow. I finally got my dress finished. Work went about as usual. Of course, I made the usual number of mistakes, but I'm learning from them, too. Mom had a PTA meeting tonight. Linda Pence was here while her folks were at a church meeting.

Karla's Wedding Write-Up Looked Nice - Monday, May 13, 1963

Karla's wedding write-up looked real nice tonight. They practically stopped the press for Sonja when they had her name spelled Sonka, but they corrected several other mistakes at the same time. The rest of my "society" news looked nice, too. There were a lot of locals because of Mother's Day visits and dinners, and I have quite a few more for tomorrow, too. I got a letter off to Evelyn, and some grass mowed. Mom re-measured my skirt hem. It's so big around I didn't tackle hemming it at 9:00 p.m. If I had thought about it in time I wouldn't have put in all the material the pattern called for.

Helped Celebrate Mother's Day - Sunday, May 12, 1963

I finished Karla's wedding write-up so I won't have it to do tomorrow and re-copied it. But I didn't get the letters written or dress hemmed. I gave Mom some Tussy iced cologne for Mother's Day. We all gave her a red carnation corsage that I had ordered. We went out to take Grandma a present at chore time and Mom called Grandma Kay on the phone. It was a cold rainy day, not very pleasant for a special occasion.