GUEST: The album belonged to my aunt Pearl Tucker. She's a colonel in the Air Force. She retired. Unfortunately, she passed away last week.
APPRAISER: Oh, I'm sorry, oh...
GUEST: And, so... At age 92. She was very involved in the aerospace program...
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: And started the Aerospace Nursing Program to train nurses to take care of the astronauts.
APPRAISER: Right, and that would be 1963, when she was assigned to do this.
GUEST: Right, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: It looks like she made great associations with the astronauts. There's lots of personalized cards in the albums.
GUEST: She would come in and train nurses. She usually had two nurses at a time that she trained.
APPRAISER: Uh-huh.
GUEST: Over a two-year period. And they learned everything-- had to wear the pressure suits, they wore the pressure suits.
APPRAISER: So they actually would have to take pressure training.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Okay, uh-huh.
GUEST: And altitude and anti-gravity. They had to do all of that.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: And they wore the, the suits, especially, to know how to get the astronaut out of the suit if something happened, if there was an accident.
APPRAISER: What is your aunt doing in this photo here? She's at sea.
GUEST: They had these vehicles that would go out and recover the astronauts.
APPRAISER: Ah.
GUEST: Say, if the, if the helicopter couldn't get to them fast enough. And so they usually had two very strong swimmers on those boats, of which Pearl did not swim. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Tell me about the menu you have here.
GUEST: Two days before their flight, they came in for training. Pearl decided that they needed a good breakfast. She took her china from home and she put together a nice breakfast and drew them this menu. She loved ducks, and she always illustrated things with ducks.
APPRAISER: Uh-huh.
GUEST: And so...
APPRAISER: It shows a real personal connection with them.
GUEST: Right. It was for Gemini 4. And the commander on Gemini 4 would have been James McDivitt.
APPRAISER: Uh-huh. And Edward...
GUEST: And Edward White was the one that did the very first spacewalk, and McDivitt had to coax him back in because he, apparently, was having a good time.
APPRAISER (laughs)
GUEST: Borman and Lovell were the backup crew.
APPRAISER: Later on, she's been with the mission for a while, and you see these astronauts here, you have Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, who were with the Apollo 1 disaster.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: It was her job to help get them out of their flight suits after the disaster.
GUEST: Right, she did, and helped with the autopsies.
APPRAISER: Yeah. So she died, you say, in May. She's only been gone for about a week.
GUEST: Yes, yes.
APPRAISER: Good.
GUEST: She's going to be interred in Arlington with honors.
APPRAISER: Is she? In reviewing all the material I saw, probably the most valuable pieces being personalized signed things from, from the astronauts, I would say a value on this entire collection, with the album which you had brought in earlier, at auction, would be $20,000 to $30,000.
GUEST: Wow, gee.
APPRAISER: (laughs) If we're looking at a value of these objects here on the, on the table, the collective of the original pieces would be this, this, and these photos here, and the book-- the value of that grouping would be $5,000 to $8,000.
GUEST: Whoa. (chuckles) She'd be really happy. (laughs)
