I remember that day all too well. I had spent the morning at Illinois State University' Bone Student Center, in a giant room filled with teacher recruiters as I desperately sought employment.

I wanted to get rid of my resumes and other stuff before heading to the cafeteria, so my girlfriend and I went up to my dorm room in Watterson Towers to drop stuff off. She turned the television on to catch the news. After all, this was the "Teacher In Space" flight, and there had been much buzz about the impending launch at the teacher job fair.

That's when we saw the coverage.

They were looking for the shuttle.

And then they showed the replay as we watched -- horrified.

I remember shouting at the screen. I was later told that my words were "Where's the f#^%ing shuttle?" I was literally knocked to my knees by the force of what I was seeing as the tears began to roll down my face, brought on by a visceral understanding of images that my brain could not comprehend.

I knelt there and watched. And wept. We never did make it down to lunch, nor did I return to the job fair.

It must have been an hour or two later that the phone rang. It was Tony Zagotta, president of the ISU College Republicans (later the National Chairman) and one of my closest friends on campus. Could I meet him, Eric Nicoll, and the rest of the CR inner circle at the office to help organize a candlelight vigil in the quad.

Before I went to that meeting, I watched what is my favorite Reagan speech.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

"Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

"For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

"We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

"And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

"I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: 'Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.'

"There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

"Thank you."

Apprpriately enough, it was those closing words that floatd into my mind nearly two decades later when Ronald Reagan died.

Today I can drive to Johnson Space Center in 10 minutes, including the time it takes to back out of the garage. A local school and the town youth center are named for astronaut Ed White, killed on the launchpad with Grissom and Chaffee in that flash of fire in the first Apollo capsule. I shared a zip code with one of the Columbia astronauts, and remember seeing the others in local stores. All of those who have lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration have a special place in the heart of this community.

I claim a number of honest-to-God rocket scientists among my friends and acquaintances. Several of them were intimately involved with Challenger, and more were a part of the Columbia team. A few, the old-timers, knew and worked with the Apollo 1 crew. Each of them tells me that they are dedicated to the continuation of manned spaceflight. Why? Because those who have given their lives to push back that frontier would want it to continue.

And so, today, we honor and remember those who died in spaceflight.

X-15 Flight 191
Michael J. Adams

Apollo 1
Gus Grissom
Ed White
Roget Chaffee

Challenger -- 51-L
Dick Scobee
Michael Smith
Judith Resnik
Ellison Onizuka
Ronald McNair
Greg Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe

Columbia -- STS-107
Rick Husband
William McCool
Michael Anderson
David Brown
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon

AND LEST WE FORGET OTHER SPACE HEROES

Soyuz 1
Vladimir_Komarov

Soyuz 11
Georgi Dobrovolski
Viktor Patsayev
Vladislav Volkov

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, Unpartisan, Sister Toldjah, bRight and Early, Right on the Left Coast, Magnum's Conservative Voice, Right Side Of The Road, SoCalPundit

TRACKBACKS: Stop the ACLU, Wizbang, Samantha Burns, Gribbit, Conservative Cat, MacStansbury, RightWingNation,, PointFive, Adam's Blog, third world country, Bacon Bits, Stuck on Stupid, Real Ugly American, Liberal Wrong Wing, Uncooperative Blogger, Publius Rendevous, Bullwinkle, Voteswagon, Baldilocks

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Here is a cool archaeological discovery from Egypt.

A beautiful black granite statue of Queen Tiye, mother of the monotheistic king Akhnaten, was unearthed last Monday in Luxor, reports Nevine El-Aref. At Karnak's Mut Temple, a John Hopkins University archaeological mission stumbled upon the statue while brushing sand off the temple's second hall.

"The statue is mostly intact," said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who added that although the 160cm tall statue has a broken arm and a missing leg, it was still considered very well preserved. It features a standing Queen Tiye wearing a wig and a cobra-decorated crown.

Initial examinations revealed that the back of the statue is engraved with two columns of hieroglyphic text bearing different titles of king Amenhotep III, who ruled for 38 years during the 18th Dynasty. According to Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of the SCA's Ancient Egypt Department, the inscriptions written on the statue also include a cartouche of a 21st Dynasty queen called Henutaw, which reveals that the same statue was used in a subsequent era.

In other archaeology-related news, the SCA and the Luxor Supreme Council agreed to enlarge the road around the two famous Memnon statues on Luxor's West Bank; they also discussed the possibility of constructing a visitors' centre -- similar to the one at the Abu Simbel Temple -- at the entrance of the Valley of the Kings.

And assuming that presumed family trees are correct, she was also King Tut's grandmother.

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He was always a part of my life.

I was born in California in the early 1960s, and so it is no surprise that the first politician whose name I knew was Ronald Reagan. He became our Governor around the time I as three-years old, and since my father was stationed in California for most of the late 1960s, I heard that name often. He was a giant of a man in the eyes of the boy I was.

Jump forward to the mid-1970s. I was a kid living on Guam. I remember listening to radio commentaries by Ronald Reagan. Twelv-years-old, and I looked forward to hearing that voice, talking common sense about the issues that faced our country. I knew he was right when he spoke of the evils of Communism, for I had watched the refugees from Vietnam flood my island home in the spring of 1975. I cried the day he went off the air, saddened by the loss of a friend and teacher.

My family returned to the US in the heat of the 1976 primary campaign. My parents, of course, were supporters of Ronald Reagan. I hoped and prayed that my hero, my mentor, would snatch the nomination from Gerald Ford. It was not to be. But four years later it would, and I was ready to work on my first campaign -- the campaign of my hero, Ronald Reagan. Reagan's triumph in the primaries, his nomination in Detroit, and his victory in November excited me like nothing before.

Two days remain linked forever in my mind. The first, twenty-five years ago, was Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and the flight to freedom of the hostages in Iran. I think that day set a tone for the future of the Reagan Administration -- the next eight years would be about a strong America and freedom for captives. The second is that awful day in March -- the man I admired wounded by an assassin but spared by the hand of God. If any of us had doubted that Ronald Reagan was marked for greatness, that day seemed to dispel all doubts. And it was eight years of greatness.

I will leave others to recount the deeds of Reagan as president. What mattered to me was the vision he set forth of America as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of freedom. What inspired me was the call to live out the heritage of liberty imparted by the Founders, and to spread that freedom abroad. It was his ability to move us to seek to do great things, and to comfort us in moments of tragedy, such as the Challenger explosion. In all of this, Ronald Reagan inspired us to be something better than what we were, and pushed us to move beyond ourselves. It is this vision that led me to become an active Republican, and to remain one.

And then came the day when my hero died. I wept for Ronald Reagan that day, and in the days that followed -- tears of joy that his suffering was done, and tears of loss that this man I loved was gone.

But is he? Or does he yet live in the dreams of those who hold fast to his vision?

Let us be faithful to that vision.

It can be morning in America again.

MY FIRST REAGAN POST

GREAT POSTS AT MIKE'S AMERICA

Posted by: Greg at 11:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

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When I can agree with Charles Rangel AND Donald Rumsfeld on an issue, it must be important.

And this one certainly is, as a matter of justice and historical honesty.

The U.S. secretary of defense and one of the most prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus, usually at odds over military matters and just about everything else, are on the same side in an effort to recognize the achievements of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

The Tuskegee Airmen were an elite group of 450 African American fighter pilots who broke the military's racial barrier in a training program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, the same year the U.S. entered World War II.

Legislation to recognize the Airmen with the Congressional Gold Medal still needs more than 80 votes to achieve a two-thirds passage in the House. The bill was sponsored by liberal Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and has been endorsed by Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Senate version has already passed.

According to the House Office of the Clerk, the Congressional Gold Medal was originally meant to recognize those who participated in the Revolutionary War, but "Congress broadened the scope of the medal to include actors, authors, entertainers, musicians, pioneers in aeronautics and space, explorers, lifesavers, notables in science and medicine, athletes, humanitarians, public servants and foreign recipients."

In order to award a Congressional Gold Medal, a bill must be passed by two-thirds of the House and Senate.

At a time when African Americans were not allowed into combat, "the Tuskegee Airmen inspired revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces, paving the way for full racial integration in the Armed Forces," according to Rangel's bill.

These were men my father held up to me as heroes. They were certainly pioneers.

We need to see this honor bestowed while some of them are still left alive.

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