mercoledì 16 novembre 2016

AMERICA’S RACE TO THE MOON INSPIRES A FREEMASON (AND A BOY) TO DREAM


As I digitized this selection of documents from the Buzz Aldrin Masonic Ephemera Collection for inclusion into the new Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website, my work that day pleasantly conjured up one of my most precious childhood memories: the day I witnessed my very first moonshot during the early 1970s.
America's Race to the Moon Inspires a Freemason (and a Boy) to DreamWhile too young to remember America’s first successful moonshot, as I handled Freemason Buzz Aldrin’s signed press photograph, I remembered the exhilaration I felt so long ago on a lazy Sunday morning in April of 1972 as I laid on my grandmother’s living room floor. I remembered being transfixed by the sights and sounds emanating from my grandmother’s television set: The deafening roar of the rocket, and the larger-than-life images of an Apollo rocket, which filled the television screen as it lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.America's Race to the Moon Inspires a Freemason (and a Boy) to DreamFor me, as for the donor of this collection, Ben Lipset, also a Freemason, seeing our first moonshot was a magical and unforgettable moments. It filled us and other viewers with excitement and inspired dreams of a bigger, brighter future.