The Gift of Men

Excerpt from The Congressional Record, July 11, 1969.

THE APOLLO PROJECT
Mr. McINTYRE. Mr. President, I asked to have placed in the RECORD the copy of a most thoughtful and moving advertisement.
I refer to North American Rockwell's full-page message in the Washington Evening Star of Thursday, July 10, a message that begins:
America is about to put men on the moon. Please read this before they go.
Mr. President, I hope millions of Americans have an opportunity to read this message. Our unbroken string of space project successes have, I fear, left us all a little sanguine. We have come to expect success in the difficult. We are scarcely impressed with success in the seemingly impossible.
With man's first football on the moon only days away, it is time we became impressed and deeply appreciative of the wise, resourceful, and eminently courageous men who will make this awesome conquest history.
The men of Apollo epitomize Sherman's definition of true courage -- "a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it."
North American Rockwell's message is an eloquent appeal to the American public to come to a "perfect sensibility" of the magnificent dimensions of the Apollo project.
There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the RECORD as follows:

AMERICA IS ABOUT TO PUT MEN ON THE MOON -- PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE THEY GO
Perhaps the best way for anyone to try to understand the size of such an undertaking is not for us to list the thousands of problems that had to be overcome, but for you to simply go out into your backyard some night, look up, and try to imagine how you'd begin, if it were up to you.
But our reason here is not to talk about the technicalities of the Apollo project. Rather, it is simply to ask you to think, for at least one brief moment, about the men and women who have applied their heads and their hearts and their hands -- and a good many years of their lives -- to putting a man on the moon.
Many of these people have worked for less money than they could have made in other places, and it is safe to say they have worked through more nights and weekends and lunch and dinner hours than they would have anywhere else.
And the astronauts, the brave men who will fly again down that long, dark and dustless corridor of space, this time to set foot -- to walk upon the surface of the moon -- they know the price that's often paid in setting out for lands unchartered. They know the price their fathers' grandfathers paid just to walk across the wilderness of America for the first fifty years.
For a long time now, we have been involved with the people who are the thinkers and the builders and the pilots of America's man-to-the-moon dream, of America's man-to-the-moon determination. We have worked with them, eaten with them, lived with them.
Yet our appreciation and admiration for them continues to grow each day -- for their energy, for their imagination, their confidence, for their patience, their resourcefulness, for their courage.
We ask you, in the days ahead as we wait for the big one to begin, to understand this fantastic feat for what it is and to put it in proper perspective, a triumph of man, of individuals, of truly great human beings. For our touchdown on the moon will not be the product of magic, but the gift of men.
In James A. Michener's novel, "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," an American admiral stands on the deck of his carrier early one morning and ponders the subject of his brave men. And thinking to himself, he asks a question of the wind which we believe all of us should ask as we think of the men who will finally make it to the moon and of the men who got them there: "Why is America lucky enough to have such men? ... Where did we get such men?"
NORTH AMERICAN ROCKWELL
[North American Rockwell is a prime contractor for the Apollo project.]