Bibby's 'Naked Lady'

Gus Grissom, the second American to fly in space after Allen Shepard, watched Bibby work on John Glenn's craft, and requested that she "paint a naked lady on the Boy Scout's capsule" as a sort of dare.

Grissom chided her, called her chicken, and playing along with the competitive nature of the NASA astronauts boys' club, Bibby drew the infamous "Naked Lady" and put it into the periscope view -- a design that Bibby was nearly fired for creating.

Bibby recounts the incident on her Web site: "When Al made his flight, there was a stencil cut for the name Freedom 7 and the name was sprayed onto the capsule. The same was true for Gus' Liberty Bell 7. I don't know who sprayed the names on the capsules. I do know that when John Glenn decided he wanted his Friendship 7 hand-painted on his capsule there was a good bit of 'joshing' that went on about it. Al and Gus made comments that a stencil wasn't good enough for John, that he had to have his name hand-painted by an artist.

"Gus told me later that he wished he'd have had an artist do his Liberty Bell. He said it really bugged him that someone else thought of it and he hadn't. Competitiveness.

"Also, behind the scenes, every now and then, John would give the other guys lectures about their behavior. He'd tell them they were role models and, as such, they should always keep that in mind. I don't know just how seriously the guys took these lectures, but I think they just kind of let it all go over their heads. However, Gus would sometimes refer to John as their 'Boy Scout.'"

Bibby goes on to say, "I should explain that because of my last name, some of the guys called me Cece Baby or Cece Bibby Baby. I'm not sure but I think some people thought my last name was Baby and not Bibby."