Letter to the editor

After a restless night of tossing and turning, worrying about an operation I was going to undergo in a matter of days. I finally got out of bed at 3AM and made myself a pot of coffee and turned on the television. As luck would have it, I clicked onto the History channel where a replay of the moon landing was taking place. It was the 40th anniversary of this great event with Walter Cronkike narrating from the news room. I can remember thinking back at that time how sad it was that President John Kennedy couldn't have lived to have witnessed it. Kennedy was the driving force that propelled us past the Russians in the race to conquer space. After the humiliating blow of seeing the Soviet Union being the first to orbit a man around the earth, America was in sore need of a quick fix, moral-wise and it couldn't have happened at a better time. The cold war, while fraught with danger and disappointment, kept us in a constant competitive mode that often resulted in accomplishments that might never had otherwise been achieved. The moon landing was a perfect example of this. Since that time we have suffered wars, too many wars, culminating in the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers followed by the events in Irag and Iran and the ongoing economic down-turn. To my troubled mind it was re-assuring to re-experience the glow of pride in my country that the the success of the Apollo mission that landed us on the lunar surface of the moon gave me. When the program ended, I turned off the tv and went back to bed and I would almost be willing to swear, fell asleep with a smile on my face.

George Morin
Auburn, Ga.