Pete Conrad - Personal Life

Personal Life

While at Princeton, Conrad met Jane DuBose, a student at Bryn Mawr, whose family owned a 1,600-acre (6.5 km2) ranch near Uvalde, Texas. Her father, Winn DuBose, was the first person to call Conrad “Pete” rather than “Peter,” the name he had used since birth. Upon his graduation from Princeton and acceptance of his Navy commission, Conrad and Jane were married on June 16, 1953. They had four children, all sons: Peter, born in 1954, Thomas, Andrew, and the youngest, Christopher, born in 1961.

Given the demands of his career in the Navy and NASA, Pete and Jane spent a great deal of time apart, and Pete saw less of his boys growing up than he would have liked. Even after he retired from NASA and the Navy, he kept himself busy. Soon, Jane had established a separate life for herself. In 1988, with their sons all grown and moved out, Pete and Jane divorced. Some years later, Jane remarried.

In 1989, Conrad’s youngest son, Christopher, was stricken with a malignant lymphoma. He died in April 1990, at the age of 28.

Conrad met Nancy Crane, a Denver divorcee, through mutual friends. Conrad and Crane married in 1990.

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