[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H5920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
  COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ``APOLLO 11'' MOON LANDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Utah 
(Mr. McAdams) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McADAMS. Mr. Speaker, in the lead-up to the Apollo 11 Moon 
landing's 50th anniversary, people across our country, including many 
from my State, Utah, have been sharing their memories of this historic 
event and its inspiration in their lives. Some of the lucky ones played 
a role in helping the space program reach this historic achievement.
  Brigham Young University graduate Charlie Bunker remembers watching 
from a common room of a boardinghouse in downtown Denver. Charlie's 
companion was an Amish gentleman who turned to him and asked if he 
thought the astronauts were really going to land on the Moon. Charlie 
said, yes, he was sure, because he worked at a place where they made 
the rockets that helped to get them there.
  Charlie was a physicist who remembers, as a 19-year-old, President 
John F. Kennedy issue his challenge to America to go to the Moon. And 
after graduating from college and getting married, Charlie landed a job 
with the Hughes Corporation in Los Angeles for a starting salary of 
$8,000 a year. He worked on Surveyor, a NASA-funded program that sent 
unmanned rockets to the Moon. That work led to being hired by Martin 
Marietta, a Denver-based aerospace company.
  Charlie and his family were living temporarily in the boardinghouse 
on the historymaking night of the Moon landing. Charlie worked for 
Martin Marietta for nearly 40 years, including the last few years in 
Utah.
  When the Deseret News asked readers to answer whether they remembered 
where they were on July 20, 1969, they received hundreds of responses. 
Several Utahns who were serving in the military wrote in, and one 
wrote: ``I was returning from a night mission over the Ho Chi Min trail 
in Laos as a pilot of a B-57. I remember it was a clear night with a 
full Moon, and my navigator and I were listening to the radio broadcast 
on Armed Forces radio at 30,000 feet. Later, my wife and I had Neil 
Armstrong to dinner in Paris while I was Air Attache to France.''
  Another wrote: ``I was at building No. 9 Manned Spacecraft Center, 
now called the Johnson Spacecraft Center, in Houston. NASA set up big 
TV screens and chairs for NASA employees and their friends. I remember 
the pride and accomplishment of the mission and celebrations from NASA 
engineers and contractors. I remember it like it was yesterday.''
  Apollo 11 and the Moon landing was a jewel in NASA's crown at the 
time. It set the foundation for many future American achievements in 
space.
  Sixteen years later, Utah Senator Jake Garn became the first sitting 
Member of Congress to fly in space when he flew aboard the space 
shuttle Discovery as a payload specialist in 1985.
  The closest I have gotten to the Moon--to date, anyway--is when, as 
the mayor of Salt Lake County, I placed the Clark Planetarium Moon rock 
into the Zions Bank vault for safekeeping. The planetarium was 
undergoing renovation, and we transferred our precious Moon rock under 
the watchful eye of law enforcement to its secure and temporary home.
  Our planetarium is one of many across the country that benefits from 
Apollo's legacy and brings science education to life for students in 
Utah. Those students will soon hopefully become the engineers, the 
mathematicians, and the explorers who will chart the next five decades 
of space research and space travel.
  Here in Congress, I am proud to sit on the Science, Space, and 
Technology Committee, where we continue our forebearers' legacy of 
bipartisan investment in our Nation's space program. Apollo inspired a 
generation of scientists and Americans, and some day soon, my four 
children may become space travelers themselves when space tourism 
becomes a reality. They will stand on the shoulders of the thousands of 
dedicated men and women who dreamed the impossible dream and then made 
it a reality.

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