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All seven of the original Mercury Astro- nauts were veteran military pilots.


In January of 1961, John Kennedy was


sworn in as president of the United States; he was the first of this generation to be elected to his country’s highest office. The following year, 1962, he would issue a challenge to all American’s: Before the end of the decade, we would land men on the moon and return them safely to earth.


As we all know, this challenge was an-


swered when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landed on the moon and safely returned to the earth in late July, 1969.


But one more task remained, and it


would require another twenty years of hard work.


When World War ll ended, the Soviet


Union was in control of all of Eastern Eu- rope and tension between the Soviet backed states and the West ran high. The focal point of tension was in Berlin, a city divided among the victors of the war. The Soviets controlled East Berlin, The United States, Britain, and France controlled West Berlin. It wasn’t long before the citi- zens of East Berlin began walking across the street and escaping to freedom in the West.


In August of 1961, the Soviets and the


East German government built a wall bris- tling with barbed wire and machine guns around all of East Berlin in an attempt to stop its citizens from fleeing to the West.


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In 1980, Ronald Reagan, a member


of the Greatest Generation and a World War ll army officer, was elected presi- dent. He will be remembered for a speech he made while in Berlin in 1987. In his speech he spoke to the Soviet Premier by saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”


In the next few years, the world would


see the Berlin Wall come down and East and West Germany reunited into one country. The Soviet Union would dis- solve and Russia would adopt a freer and more democratic form of govern- ment.


Only the youngest of the Greatest


Generation are still among the living; of the more than sixteen million men who marched off to war, fewer than one mil- lion remain. Their numbers are being re- duced by more than four thousand a week.


When my time came to serve my


country, the task was keeping the free- dom and the peace that the Greatest Generation paid for with their blood. And to them I say, "Close your eyes and pic- ture a peace-time soldier in dress uni- form. You’ll know which one he is be- cause he’ll be saluting you, and if you’ll listen closely, he and millions of other Americans will be saying, 'Job well done.'"


Thank you for all you’ve done.


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