Tomorrow brings the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. I may write more about this tonight or tomorrow.
July 20, 1969, saw another major event, though. Ironically, it involved the brother of the President who had, several years earlier, called the nation to send an American to the Moon and bring him back safely again. That other event was the accident on Chappaquiddick Island that saw a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, drown when she was the passenger in a car driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, youngest brother of President John Kennedy.
The nation was so understandably focused on the amazing feat of astronauts landing and then walking on the lunar surface that at first, little attention was paid to the Chappaquiddick tragedy. It was an under-the-fold front page story on the day after the landing, the latter event causing newspapers to use headlines the size of those that announced the end of World War Two in 1945.
Landing on the Moon certainly deserved that kind of attention and celebration. What events today would warrant similar treatment?
See these pieces:
An Anniversary That Can Fuel Our Dreams
Fame and the Man on the Moon
No comments:
Post a Comment