American newspaper columnist and host of two Washington, D.C., television shows. As the wife of Scott Carpenter, one of the Mercury Seven astronauts, she was a pioneering member of NASA’s early spaceflight families.
In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, the astronauts and their wives became national celebrities, with exclusive LIFE magazine rights to their “personal stories”; the stresses of life in the public eye led the women of Mercury 7 to form an informal support group later called the Astronaut Wives Club. Carpenter was often singled out for her appearance. The Washington Post in 1961 described her as a “striking platinum blonde”. But she also had writing talent. Life published Rene’s first-person feature story on her experiences, both as a career military wife and on the events during her husband’s 24 May 1962 flight aboard Aurora 7.
In 1968, she campaigned for Robert Kennedy. She had a syndicated women’s page column, “A Woman, Still”, and from 1972 to 1976, was a television host, first with Everywoman and then with Nine in the Morning. She worked for Committee for National Health Insurance.
She married Scott Carpenter in Boulder, Colorado, St. John’s Episcopal Church, on 9 September 1948. The couple had five children, and divorced in 1972. She married Lester H. Shor, a builder and real estate developer, in 1977.
Rene Carpenter died of congestive heart failure on 24 July 2020 in a Denver hospital. She was 92. Of the fourteen men and women of Project Mercury, Rene was the last surviving member.
Link to Wikipedia biography