Mourning Constitutional

  For the last few years, as I watch the fabric of our once proud and strong nation crumble and shread, I have tried my best to put my finger on just what exactly has gone wrong. Where did we stray from the values and principals that used to encourage people from all over the world to pack up their belongings, leave family and friends behind, and take the huge risk of coming to America in pursuit of that inticing "American Dream"?  I have uncovered far more than one thing that has caused America's downward spiral into this uninspiring and lackluster social malady she suffers from, from the reprehensable duming-down of our previously magnificent school systems, to our deplorable switch from worshipping The Almighty to worshipping the almighty dollar, but one thing that seems to have happened that has a lot to do with our dismal delemma is modern society's loss of real heros, and replacing them with shiny, empty idols.
  I am hard pressed to come up with a contemporary, modern-day hero. I mean, I'm sitting here, vurtually undistracted, and for the life of me I can't think of a soul that I would classify as a real American hero! Not one single name comes to mind, except the thousands of New York's first responders who rushed into danger on Sept. 11,2001, and the hundreds who never came back.  Now, I know a lot of you are saying what about the "Tiger Woods" and "Dale Earnhardt Jr."s of the today? I'm not saying there aren't a few extrordinary, over-achievers out there who deserve our respect and perhaps a bit of 'Hero Worship', but like many of you, I was raised during the fast paced, heady 1950's through 70's, when being called a hero meant something all together different. And the heros of the day could inspire an entire nations youth to want to achieve their most hoped for and desirable goals, the kinds of goals that can continue to keep America at the forefront of the endeavors that keep a nation strong and prosperous and the leader when it comes to events which shape the future of the entire planet. 
  On May 25th, 1961, a popular, young president and many people's hero, John F. Kennedy challenged a fledgling organization called The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, to achieve the unimaginable goal of landing an American man on the surface of the Moon and bringing that man back to Earth alive and well. Oh yeah, and he wanted the men and women of NASA, many of whom were still having trouble finding their offices, to perform this feat before the end of the 60's, just nine years! A call went out through the U.S. military and the test pilots out at Murroc Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert for the first bunch of brave men who would soon be called "America's Mercury 7 Astronauts".  Once this group of aviators had been selected and their names were plastered on the front pages of every newspaper and on every nightly newscast in the world, these 7 unknown men became America's biggest heros over night. The press followed every move these guys made, and each and every success and failure made by NASA, and before long they had become the heros of the free world. Although our arch enemy, the Soviet Union was attempting to acclomplish the same goal, and had it's own heros, much of their efforts were kept under wraps. The Russians did manage to put the first man in orbit around the Earth, but just a month or so later, John Glen blasted off from Cape Canavrel atop a ballistic missile called a Mercury rocket, and took his fifteen minute ride around the planet, and the team at NASA never looked back, making those 7 original spacemen immediate heros. America's space program leaped from the Mercury program, which proved that a man could survive in the vacumm of space, to the Gemini program and a whole new bunch of heros. These men set to work to prove out the systems and hardware that America would need to take us on a 500,000 mile trip to the Moon and back, and without a single failure, acclomplished every single objective the scientists and engineers placed in front of them. And with the news media along for each mission, the names of the astronauts of Gemini, like the men of Mercury before them, became household names. After the remarkable, almost sureal success of Gemimi came The Eighteen Apollo missions, and another fresh group of men who would become heros. With the prior successes of Mercury and Gemini, the team at NASA had become used to achieving perfection without comprimise, and the thought of failure was almost forgotten when disaster struck America's mighty space program and brought everyone back to the reality that what they were asking our heros to do was inherently dangerous.  On the evening of Jan. 27th, 1967, at 6:31pm, during a test of the spacecraft communications systems, as three of America's heros sat in the 100% oxygen environment of their sealed Apollo 1 capsule atop the Saturn V rocket on pad 34-A at Cape Kennedy, a spark ignited the pure oxygen and in just fifteen short minutes as the pad crew struggled to free them, original Mercury astronaut,USN Capt. Walter'Wally' Schirra,USAF Col. Donn F. Eisel, and USMC Res. Col. Walter'Walt' Cunningham burned to death inside their command module.  The United States morned the loss of these three heros as NASA fought to keep Congress from pulling the funding for President Kennedy's dream, and with new focus and determination the heros of NASA continued their quest for the MOON.  With an estimated 3 billion people the world over watching on TV, on July 20th,1969, at 1:54pmEST, Commander of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and LEM Pilot Edwin'Buzz' Aldrin, another one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, aboard a fragile and gangly craft named 'Eagle' touched down on the barren, dusty surface of the Moon, and with Armstrong's announcement, "The Eagle has landed." humans were on another heavenly body. Two hours later, Neil Armstrong exited the LEM, climed down the ladder attached to one of Eagle's landing gear, and took the now famous step off the LEM and onto the lunar surface, and with the whole world watching on TV said "That's one small step for man, and one giant step for mankind." Buzz Aldrin followed a few minutes after and became the second human to walk on another world and for a few hours they called the Moon their home, and became the entire world's heros. This was real, bone fide hero stuff here, no doubt about it. But just a few months later, on April 11th, 1970, with Apollo 13 almost 200,000 miles from earth, at 2:13pmEST, an event of an unforseen nature would thrust some otherwise unknown heros into the limelight.  With Command module Odyssey and Lunar Module Aquarius docked together and traveling about 17,000 MPH towards the Moon, The astronauts had just finished a TV broadcast from inside their spacecraft when Mission Control asked them to stir their oxygen tanks. Command module Pilot, John 'Rusty' Swigert, a last minute replacement for Ken Mattingly who had come into contact with but never got the measles, threw two switches on his control panel and a faulty electrical relay, sparked inside one of the oxygen tanks and blew the side out of the service module and ended these three heros chances of walking on the Moon, and almost their lives. For the next four days, Gene Krantz and his team of unsung heros, the engineers and technicians behind the scenes, were made responsible for getting America's astronauts home using a dying spacecraft and the uncommon valor usually reserved for more daring men. With the assistance of Ken Mattingly in the simulator at Cape Kennedy, the reluctant heros who were the ground control tecnicians at Johnson Space Center in Houston worked without rest until they had used their genius and skill to overcome calamity and potential disaster and they returnrd Jim Lovell, Rusty Swigert, and Fred Haise safely back to the Earth at 1:07pmEST as Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, just a few hundred yards from the Carrier sent to pick them up in what was to be the most precise landing in the history of the Moon program.  The Apollo program continued until 1972 and ended with the successfull return of Apollo 17 from a trip from the Earth to the Moon, and America moved on to the next, and still ongoing space project, The Shuttle. But the end of the Race to the Moon, and the culmination of the Apollo program ended with it an era of brave men, and women, who unflinchingly climed aboard untested hardware and relied on unproven software in an effort to accomplish the unbelievable goal of landing men on the Moon. 
   This complicated and dangerous endeavor served to unite a nation, and inspire the world. But it also performed an unexpected and needed function. It inspired a generation of youngsters to  excell in school, to go on to college and excell there and become the scientists and engineeres of the future. The men and women who put their heads together and design, build, and operate incredible peices of equipment like the Space Shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope, the soon to be powered up Hadron Particle Collider, and a myriad of other scientific and medical inventions and devices. When one of my all-time heros, NASA Flight Director Gene Krantz, was asked whether America should continue it's expolration of space he said of course, it is imperative. It's programs like that that get little kids excited about science, about math, about the disciplines that keep the world progressing. Without real, hard science and exploration, and the heros that naturally come along with them, who will inspire the next generation's children?  Do you want to live in a world where the people doing the highly technical and complicated things we will need to do were inspired by playing a video game? People who didn't really have any real heros, only idols who strive for mediocracy, to be thugs and gangsters? Even the sports idols of today are mostly thugs and gangsters who can't pass a urine test, let alone a math test. Our current space program has become mundane and uneventful. The only time NASA even makes the news is when something fails, like Hubble did at first, or when disaster strikes, as with Columbia and Discovery.  Man's greatest, most exciting and challenging endeavors lie in the exploration and conquering of inner and outter space, and the people we are going to need to invent, engineer, build, and operate the equipment that will successfully complete these challenges most certainly are not playing "Grand Theft Auto"! Ever since 'Reality Television' has become the entertainment of the masses, and people of mediocre standing have become 'stars', and every singer and garage band with a catchy song and no substance is being played on the radio, Americans now strive to be average, run-of-the-mill, mundane, because it doesn't take anything special to get on TV or the radio anymore. And, for Pete's sake, who wants to be a nerd and perhaps acclomplish something that could cure cancer or save the planet from famine?They watch Jerry Springer and Morey Povitch exploit teenage pregnancy, inter-family relations and drug addiction, and make them behaviors that will get you on TV, make you famous, and all of a sudden it's cool to be from the ghetto, or be married to your sister. The schools have removed all of the subjects that teach children how to think critically, how to work as a team, how to function in a modern society, and now teach our kids nothing but how to be greedy and self centered. Art, music, literature, all the things that make a person able to grow and learn for the rest of their life have been scrapped and all most people need to be able to do in America today is say "Do you want fries with that?"  
  This isn't the big, ugly reason America is in the position it's in, but it's  surely part of the problem. Is it too late to save the day? I don't know, but I know who to ask, and it's not Tupac or Kobe or Tila Tequila. If you want to know how to change our current situation, ask someone who knows what it means to sacrifice and give 100% in order to succeed. Ask Johnny Mantz. Johnny Mantz was a racecar driver from California who was one of Indy's original '100 MPH Club' members. Johnny showed up at Darlington, South Carolina in 1950 for the inaugural running of The Southern 500 at NASCAR's only paved track. Johnny and a couple of friends, one of them was Bill France Sr. didn't have a car for the race, so they went into town and bought a brand new black '50 Plymouth, painted the #98, some sponsers names and the driver's name in white and qualified dead last out of 75 cars for the race. On raceday, Johnny drove his black #98 street stock Plymouth, with a friend's daughter's baby doll  in the passenger seat for company, around the apron of the track, letting the other 74 guys battle and crash out  until he finally took the lead, and held on to it to finish 9 laps ahead of second place driver, Fireball Roberts, and win the first 500 mile race on asphault in NASCAR's short but storied history.* That's what I call hero material, that's guts and determination, skill and know-how. So if you want to know what it takes to inspire young people to greatness, ask Johnny Mantz, ask a hero.
 * story told to me by Peggy Mantz, Johnny's widow.