MOON LANDING 50TH ANNIVERSARY
TO BE CELEBRATED AT THE NIXON LIBRARY
AT&T presents a daylong program including free museum admission,
family-friendly events and special program “Earth to Moon: The Longest Phone Call in History”
YORBA LINDA, CA — On Saturday, July 20, the public is invited to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the historic telephone call President Nixon made to astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as they stood on the surface of the moon. Admission to the Nixon Library will be free and open to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and family-friendly activities will be offered all day educating guests about space, science, and technology.
The daylong celebration is presented by AT&T, the company who helped make possible the call from the Oval Office to the moon’s Tranquility Base. The call traveled an estimated 290,000 miles one way, the longest-distance phone call ever made and President Nixon himself considered it the most important call he had made during his time in office.
Guests will be invited to see NASA experts display an SR-71 space suit and a pressurized suit demonstration, learn about the constellations in a blow-up planetarium, launch pressurized cardboard rockets 100 feet in the air, enjoy screenings of the new critically-acclaimed Apollo 11 documentary, participate in an educational presentation about drones and recreate the famous photo of President Nixon greeting the Apollo 11 astronauts in the Airstream Mobile Quarantine Facility upon their safe return home.
At 7:30 p.m. that evening guests are invited to “Earth to Moon: The Longest-Distance Phone Call in History,” a special presentation that will relive the historic phone call 50 years to the minute with Nixon White House officials Dwight Chapin, Larry Higby and John Price who were with President Nixon the night he made the call to the moon, and a special appearance by Alex Eisenhower, grandson of President and Mrs. Nixon and great-grandson of President and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Rhonda Johnson, president of AT&T California will open the program and Hugh Hewitt, president of the Richard Nixon Foundation will moderate. The 7:30 p.m. program is open to members of the press.
Hugh Hewitt, for whom this month took over as President of the Nixon Foundation said: “We have begun a series of celebrations here at the Nixon Library in partnership with generous history-minded supporters such as AT&T, and our long-standing, superb partners at the National Archives and Records Administration, which will commemorate significant fiftieth anniversaries of the Nixon presidency. Richard Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969, but there is no doubt that the highlight of his first year in office was calling the brave astronauts on the moon that summer 50 years ago, as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins proved to the world –and into history– that there are no limits to what humankind can achieve when bound together by what President Nixon called ‘the lift of a driving dream.’”
Hewitt added, “The Nixon Foundation is grateful not just to AT&T for its financial support of this celebration but for their commitment to exploring their archives and assisting the Foundation and NARA staffs in documenting exactly how this most memorable call of the last century occurred.”
The daylong celebration begins at 8:00 a.m. with the Space Race 5k, a fun run through Yorba Linda where runners and walkers will dress in their best space attire. More than 500 runners and walkers are expected to participate.
More information and the public can register for all events at nixonfoundation.org/apollo.
About The Richard Nixon Foundation
The Richard Nixon Foundation is a privately supported, nonprofit institution applying the legacy and vision of President Richard Nixon, America’s relentless grand strategist, to defining issues facing our nation and the world. For additional information, visit www.nixonfoundation.org.
For media RSVP contact:
Joe Lopez
714-364-1147
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