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Letters to the editor

Moon landing

In the most recent Rice Magazine, Rice University president David W. Leebron’s column began, “Farragut State Park, Idaho, at the 1969 Boy Scout Jamboree.” He was there! Just days later, I read Bibiana Campos Seijo’s “Giant Leap” column (C&EN, July 22, 2019, page 2) and was again taken back to my own TV-less experience at that jamboree. I had never known that Neil Armstrong gave us a shout-out; thanks for that revelation. As a Rice graduate, I find this next Apollo tidbit particularly interesting. On the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s “Why, some say, the moon?” speech, which was given in Rice Stadium in 1962, I was able to attend a lecture by former flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris in the movie Apollo 13) titled “Failure Is Not an Option.” Before the lecture, a portion of Kennedy’s speech was showing on video. At the point where Kennedy asked, “Why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?” the video cut away to the typed manuscript, showing the next words written in by hand, undoubtedly by Kennedy himself, playing to his local audience: “Why does Rice play Texas?” I had often wondered about that question. Then President Kennedy explained it: we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Greg Alexander
Crystal Lake, Illinois