RocketSTEM Issue #8 - July 2014 | Page 82

taken a slingshot around the Moon). It is a very small contingent and encountering similar groups of people is not a common thing, but it does happen occasionally. “I had the opportunity at the Memorial Day parade this year, to meet four survivors of the Doolittle Raid. My father was a contemporary of Jimmy Doolittle, born in the same year. But instead of racing around the pylons, he would be a judge at the Cleveland air races. “I went up to the copilot who don’t know if there was another B-25 commander in the crew that survived. but Colonel Dick Cole was two things i want to talk to you about.’ One is the same thing that I told Jimmy after my father died. I said ‘Jimmy do you know that our rocket was taller than your takeoff roll on the carrier?’ I decided that I would tell Dick Cole sunk in what I was talking about. And then I said ‘Now there’s another thing that whenever I am introduced as a speaker or in the audience, or at an occasion, it is almost unanimous – very very rare is there ever an exception – that I’m introduced as the second man on the Moon.’ And I said to Dick, ‘Now we share that in common because you’re going to be known as don’t think he was too worried about that. “It is one of those undone things that i’m going to get together with one or more of the four of them and have them consider what their reunions have meant to them for 72 years. “I’m always interested in people recognizing that it was not just 12 Americans who landed and walked on the Moon, but it’s 24 who reached the Moon. That was enabled by four learning missions and one emergency. I think that 24 is a much better number for students to be aware of, but I have given up on the State Department recognizing all 24 living or deceased as lunar ambassadors. All American and foreign space people should be aware and reminded of what’s gone before them.” 80 80 www.RocketSTEM .org