Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project

From RixWiki

Cece Bibby painted the "nose art" insignia on Friendship 7, Aurora 7, and Sigma 7.

Early Career

She was hired by RCA's Missile Division at Patrick Air Force Base to do drawings documenting downrange missile tracking sites." She subsequently transferred to the publications department. Her subjects branched out to include artist's conceptions of "engineers ideas of space."

From RCA she went to Aerospace Corporation where she focused on such conceptual art including space stations and space hotels.

Project Mercury

In 1959, she was hired by Chrysler as a contract artist at the NASA Publications office. There she had the opportunity to meet the Mercury astronauts.

Becoming the Artist to the Astronauts

John Glenn pressed Bibby into service to paint the Friendship 7 logo onto his spacecraft. He had been disappointed in the "artwork" on Alan Shepards Freedom 7 and Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 which had been applied with spray paint and a stencil. Like the F-86 he had flown in Korea during a Marine-Air Force exchange program, which carried the personalized artwork "MiG Mad Marine," Glenn wanted the name of his spacecraft in hand painted script lettering.

The astronaut office called the art department and explained to its manager what they wanted. Bibby got the assignment of designing the artwork because her boss felt that women had better handwriting than men. She came up with several designs and gave them to here boss to present to Glenn. Glenn selected the final design and said that he wanted the same person who drew the design to paint it on the spacecraft. The boss had strongly argued against sending Bibby up to the white room, simply because she was a woman. When he suggested that they cut a stencil from the design and spray paint it, Glenn insisted that, unless Bibby herself had an objection to going to the top of the gantry and paint the spacecraft, she should do the job.

Bibby took about a week to paint the logo. During this time she had to deal first with the objections of pad leader Guenter Wendt and then taunts from other pad workers.

Gotcha!

Bibby found herself in the middle of the frequent practical jokes and "gotchas" between the astronauts and the technicians working on Mercury. While she was in the middle of painting the "Friendship 7" logo, Gus Grissom asked here how it was going, and then said that she should really paint a naked lady on "the Boy Scout's" spacecraft. Not wanting to lose her job over the joke, despite Gus egging her on with "chicken clucking," she still took up the dare and prepared a drawing of a naked lady lying in front of a copy of the Friendship 7 logo with a caption which read "It's you and me John Baby... against the world, and arranged for a friend who worked in the white room to slip the drawing under the cover for the periscope objective, so that Glenn would see it when he entered the capsule on the planned launch day. The launch was scrubbed after Glenn had seen her handiwork, which had been removed by her friend, as planned, before the countdown commenced.

Glenn left a note on Bibby's drawing board saying how much he had appreciated the joke. She nearly did get fired, but for the intervention of both Glenn and Grissom who told her management that he had put her up to it. When management tried to get her banned from the pad, the astronauts banded together and said that they all wanted her to paint their spacecraft.

For Glenn's new launch date, Bibby prepared an updated drawing this time of an old frumpy washerwoman, complete with mop and carrying a wash bucket with the "Friendship 7" logo. This time the caption read "You were expecting maybe someone else.. John Baby??"

Scott Carpenter asked Bibby for a "nekkid" lady of his own and she provided one. Wally Shirra lost out however, because the heat had been raised by another incident around the time of his flight. NASA had put out a brochure on pad safety. In one photo in the brochure a photo with six men in the pad elevator was used to demonstrate the proper way to ride the elevator. Two shorter men were placed in the front, and four others in the back, all facing forward and wearing hard hats. Before the brochure was published, someone had airbrushed out one of the men in the rear and replaced him with a buxom, bare-breasted woman of the proper height. Although Bibby was clearly innocent since NASA had farmed out the brochure to a subcontractor and Bibby's department had not been involved in anyway, she put an end to her "naked lady period."

Bibby painted the logos for Aurora 7 and Sigma 7. The logo for Faith 7 was done in her absence. She left NASA after Schirra's flight with the intention to move back to California where she had grown up, but couldn't stay away. She returned to NASA after MA-9. The artist for Faith 7 is unknown, but judging by the style it looks like they went back to the stencil and spray paint.

Life after NASA

Bibby finally left NASA for good in 1970 after marrying a naval officer.

She continues to create artwork which is displayed on her personal web site.

See also

• Cece Bibby's personal web page contains her memories and some photos from those days.
• Profile of Cece Bibby on collectspace