Mes amis, our friend Mr. Brewer had intended to be the next to address you in this forum, but I asked his indulgence in order to bring to your attention an occasion deserving of our notice and our honor.
Tomorrow, May 5, 2011, has a significance far beyond the celebration of Cinco de Mayo–as important as that may be to you. Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary of the first flight of an American into space by way of a rocket launched from the ground. On May the fifth, 1961, Alan Shepard, reclining inside the Mercury capsule christened Freedom 7, was boosted into a suborbital flight by a Redstone rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Mr. Shepard was lifted to an altitude of 187 kilometres, and he was catapulted downrange a distance of 486 kilometres. He was not the first to travel into space, an honor held by the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, nor would he be the first American to orbit the earth, as that record belongs to astronaut John Glenn. There are those who argue that the first person in space was indeed an American, and that the vehicle employed was not a vertically-launched rocket, but I digress. We will not explore that subject during this time of honoring the man and the mission.
Mr. Shepard passed from this life on July 21, 1998, at seventy-four years of age. Take a moment now with me to celebrate his life and such a great accomplishment for both the astronaut and this nation.
