NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA LIBRARY
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
27514
/• /' O \ s /■ tt n
CROSSROADS
Belmont Abbey College
JULY 1972
VON BRAUN SPEAKS AT COMMENCEMENT
Dr. Wernher Von Braun ad
dressed the 1972 graduating
class at Belmont Abbey College.
Because we believe his message
will be of considerable interest to
you, we present it here in its
entirety.
Greek Islands. During this
cruise we also visited the famous
site of the Delphi Oracle to which
since antiquity generals and
statesmen would make their
pilgrimage to find out what the
future held in store for them.
The beautiful park of Delphi is
also the home of a famous Apollo
temple.
When we left the park, a Greek
newspaperman who must have
been trailing us buttonholed me
and asked, “Dr. von Braun, what
Abbot Edmond, Bishop Bor
ders, Abbot Walter, Father John
Bradley, Reverend Clergy,
Graduates of the Class of 1972,
Honored Guests.
We in NASA have often been
asked what the real reason was
for the amazing string of suc
cesses we had with our Apollo
flights to the moon. I think the
only honest answer we can give
is that we tried to never overlook
anything. Let me give you an
illustration of what I mean by
that.
A few weeks before the launch
of Apollo II which carried Neil
Armstrong’s team to the lunar
surface, I found myself in a
position comparable to that of a
ship captain whose boat is in
drydock. We had delivered our
Saturn V rocket to our Launch
Operations Center at Cape
Kennedy where they stacked the
various rocket stages and
spacecraft modules and checked
out the whole unit. There was
nothing for me to do but wait,
.’ince it was pretty obvious that
tiie period after the launching
would be pretty hectic regar
dless of whether the flight met
with success or failure, I decided
that this was a golden op
portunity to take a little vacation
and so my family and I em
barked on a cruise through the
in the world are you doing here in
Delphi three weeks before your
rocket will carry men to the
moon?’’ I replied, “Of course, I
wanted to hear from the Oracle
whether we will have a suc
cessful operation and I also
wanted to pay my respects to
Apollo, the patron saint of our
project.’’
He wrote a little story about
this incident in his Greek
newspaper which was promptly
picked up by Time magazine in
their well-known column
“People and Events.’’ A few
days later a stranger came
storming into the office of Dr.
Thomas Paine who was then my
boss and the Administrator of
NASA, and asked, “Dr. Paine, do
you approve of your Wernher
von Braun placating ancient
gods to ask for success in your
moon program?’’ Dr. Paine
replied with a deadpan face,
“You don’t worry about that;
we’ve just sent Frank Borman to
the Pope so all bets are
covered.”
Our program of space ex
ploration is simply the latest
chapter in a continuing scientific
revolution that dates back to
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo.
It was their observations, and
their ability to draw inferences
from what they saw, that moved
the Earth from its exalted
position as the center of the
universe. That was a profound
blow to the human ■ego, and it
called for some very, painful
reassessments of man’s place in
the universe. But it was a very
See VON BRAUN, Page 6
The Identity of Belmont Abbey G>Uege
BY Rev. John P. Bradley
One of the greatest problems
of our complex, technological
society is its growing im-
personalism. In today’s society,
alas, many of us find it more and
more difficult to retain a sense of
our identity as persons, each
with his own individual dignity
and worth. It is perhaps un--
derstandable, then, that there
has developed in recent times a
sort of backlash: more and more
people are unfortunately
reacting to the impersonalism of
present-day society by rejecting
society and devoting themselves
almost exclusively to their own
personal interests. In other
words, as is usual with any
backlash, there is a moving from
one extreme to another. An
excessive preoccupation with
self is no more acceptable than
the impersonalism we complain
of. Nevertheless, what we are
seeing today should convince us
of the utter importance of every
human being’s need to be able to
establish and maintain his
identity and to have a healthy
appreciation of his own identity
and worth.
This is true not only in the case
of individual persons, but also in
the case of a college. For after
all a college is simply a group of
persons who have come together
to pursue certain educational
goals. A college, then, cannot,
any more than an individual
person, function properly
without a sure grasp of its
identity.
In my opinion, many church-
related colleges, Belmont Abbey
College included, have gradually
become less sure of their identity
and, consequently, less clear
about their goals and purposes.
If this is so, these colleges leave
themselves open to some pointed
questions; How do you differ
from other colleges? Why should
students attend your college
rather than, say, a state-
supported college where tuition
is much cheaper?
There are, of course, various
answers that can be given to
these and similar questions, but
See IDENTITY Page 8