Rene Carpenter

Rene Carpenter, born Rene Louise Price, met Scott Carpenter when she was working as an usherette at a theater.[1][2] They married in Boulder, Colorado, on September 9, 1948.[1] In November 1949 she had their first child, Scott Jr., and thirteen months later their second child, Tim, who died at six months while they were living in San Diego where her husband was in flight training.[1] The couple had three more children.[1]

In the late 1950s and through the 1960s the wives of astronauts were treated by NASA and the press as national celebrities; the stress they experienced led the wives of the Mercury 7 to form an informal support group called the Astronaut Wives Club. The Washington Post in 1961 described Carpenter as a "striking platinum blonde."[3] Life ran a first-person feature on her experience during the May 24,1962 launch of Aurora 7.[4][5][6] In 1962 Time called her "by anyone's standards a dish."[7] In 1975 People magazine called her "the undisputed prom queen of the early space program."[8]

In 2015 she was portrayed by Yvonne Strahovski in the miniseries The Astronaut Wives Club, based on the 2013 book by the same title.[9]

In 1968 she campaigned for Robert Kennedy.[8] She had a syndicated women's page column entitled A Woman, Still and from 1972 through 1976 was a TV presenter, first with Everywoman and then with Nine in the Morning.[3][8][10] She worked for Committee for National Health Insurance.[3]

She and Scott Carpenter divorced in 1972 and she moved with their children to Bethesda, Maryland.[3][8] She later married Lester Shor, a real estate developer.[3]