Something to Believe In……
It’s a busy day today in Monaghan’s 4
th largest workwear store as we’re having a warehouse sale and Gary’s busy brewing coffee and Damian’s eating all the ice cream we’ve promised to visitors.
Damian is confident that his sale will be a success…Darth is counting the cost of the free coffee and ice cream…
But some of us still take time to dream of other things, the moon for instance.
Fifty eight years ago tomorrow President John Fitzgerald Kennedy gave one of humanity’s most important ever speeches to the joint houses of Congress where he outlined the nation’s ambition to go to the moon.
The USSR had previously launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, and a few days before Kennedy’s speech , Yuri Gargarin had gone into space, the world’s first astronaut, or Cosmonaut, and returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. America had also suffered the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba and were desperate for something to believe in.
Kennedy gave it to them with the mission to land a man on the moon.
The curious thing is that he didn’t really believe in it himself. It was costing an absolute fortune, did not have universal support and was unlikely to be accomplished even within his second term as President. As his presidency went on he toned down the ambition and in one of his final speeches before his assassination he referred to sending a man into space, no longer specifying the moon as the ultimate goal. In fact it is highly unlikely that the US Congress would have continued to fund the Apollo programme if Kennedy had lived. But after his tragic death the American people rallied around the moon mission almost as a memorial to him.
Kennedy himself had simply wanted to beat the Russians…at anything.
That’s what he believed in.
Kennedy’s vice-president, Johnson, had been the true believer in the moon landings. He pushed to have Cape Canaveral renamed as Cape Kennedy, and saw through the Apollo missions. His Presidency ended in January 1969, but he was invited to the Kennedy Space Centre on July 16
th 1969 for the launch of Apollo 11’s mission to land a man on the moon, fulfilling Kennedy’s ambition to see a moon landing before the end of the decade.
I’ve always been in awe of the moon landings themselves and . perhaps more so, the ambition and passion to follow that grand vision. Ever since I found out about Monaghan man, Benny Callan’s part in the whole exercise I smile even more every time I look up at the moon.
Benny Callan left Corduff on a horse and trap in 1928, took a steam train from Ballybay to Derry where he boarded the Anchor Line ocean liner and sailed to New York. He studied hard and became an engineer and got jobs with various airplane manufacturers, settling with Grumann Laboratories who were commissioned by NASA to build the Eagle, the landing pod for Armstrong and Aldrin to land on the moon.
All of the Grumann engineers were allowed to have their names placed on a plaque on the Eagle and it’s still up there on the moon. Benny Callan only came home to Monaghan once, in 1962, he commented that everything seemed to have got smaller in his absence.
So I look up at the moon and I think of Kennedy, Johnson, Apollo11,ambition, big dreams ,and Benny Callan from Corduff ,and I believe that everything is possible.
To Infinity & Beyond,
Paul
