Miss Jones, our teacher, brought a television from her home and hauled up the steps to our classroom. She wanted us "to see history", as she put it. And we did.

I remember waiting for the National Geographic Magazine to come out with coverage a few months later with the spectacular color photos of the launch and pictures from space.

...and he needed to empty his very full bladder while he was waiting in the capsule on the launching pad. He told them, "I need to urinate." At first they told him he would have to hold it. He was at the point in the mission where it would have been difficult to let him out to go to visit the facilities. But this went on for a while, while they were dealing with the inevitable delays. Finally they knew they were either going to have to get the monkey wrenches and can openers and get him out, or just tell him to go ahead and let loose in his suit. "The man's got to go!" one of the mission engineers said. Somebody asked why there wasn't some kind of bathroom facility on the ship. Somebody else answered that it was only a 15-minute flight! But by then Shepard had been encapsulated in his position atop the big roman candle for hours. His wife was watching on TV and mentioned to her friends and family members that he had drunk several cups of coffee just before he went to "work" that morning. So mission control finally told him to just go ahead and urinate in his suit. What a look of relief there was on the man's face as he finally was allowed to relieve himself.

This scene was in the film "The Right Stuff" when it was released in 1983. I saw it for the first time either in the movie theater or on TV within a year or two after it was released, I don't remember which. And every time since that first viewing that I have seen that movie, this scene was left out. Apparently it was cut out of subsequent releases for some reason. Did Shepard and his family ask them to cut that scene because it was embarrassing or for some other reason?

Do any of y'all remember ever seeing that scene in that movie?

-- Ron