Schirra, as the only astronaut to fly Mercury, Gemini, AND Apollo,
apparently figured his career was done, so he could act whatever way
he wanted.

This was not good for his two fellow astronauts on Apollo 7, Cunningham
and Eisele, who never flew in space again. Apparently Kraft said words to the effect that he would never allow them to ride a spacecraft again after Schirra's constant disregard of orders and general bad attitude.

Kraft was conciliatory to Cunningham, the only surviving member of
the Apollo 7 crew (Schirra died in 2007 - hmm, think they were waiting
for him to pass on?), during the award ceremony recognizing the first
manned Apollo mission. 40 years too late to apologize for ending a
man's career and dream, I would say.

Not sure how much C and E joined in with Schirra's griping, because I would hate to think they got punished just for being in proximity to
Schirra - who also had a bad cold that he gave to C and E, and later
turned it into moola with a cold tablet ad on TV.

Cunningham came out with a book in 1977 on the astronaut corps,
titled The All-American Boys, among the first books to show the
astronauts as more human than gods or heroes. I recall how he
pointed out that most astronauts came from the Midwest, where
folks tend to be better at following orders - as opposed to those
godless unAmerican states like Massachusetts where people tend
to act all independent like.

Okay, I threw that last bit in, but C really did show that most
astronauts up to the time his book came out were from the Midwest
and he did give his thoughts as to why that is so. He also revealed
how much these guys often acted like drunk frat boys in opposition
to their public image at the time.

Walt has his own Web site here:

http://www.waltercunningham.com/