Political Quotes

“45 years ago yesterday the entire world was riveted to their television sets--often a television image that was grainy, black and white, and flickering--as we heard the report, ``The eagle has landed.'' Then we saw Neil Armstrong come down the ladder of the lunar lander, and that is when he made the famous statement, ``That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'' In the context of that day 45 years ago, unless one was of sufficient youth to not have a memory, anyone will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing, because that was an extraordinary time for the entire planet. This Senator at the time was an Army lieutenant. At the lift-off 4 days earlier, I had been in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and had gone to the embassy asking if they had a television so I could watch the lift-off in my hometown area of Brevard County where, from this launch pad, my family had homesteaded under the old Homestead Act in 1913, working the land for years, eking out a living which, under the Homestead Act, was a way of populating the country--particularly the westward expansion but that was also the southward expansion, into unsettled lands like Florida. I have a copy of that deed of 160 acres of land, signed by Woodrow Wilson to my grandparents in 1917. That land sits today at the north end of the space shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center.…”