“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

President John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962.

President’s Kennedy’s rousing words on that hot Houston day, while not his first moon speech, changed everything for the nation. Just a few months earlier, hundreds had moved to Houston to join a small task force, transforming a sleepy, coastal pasture into the command post for humankind’s greatest adventure. In fact, the team at the newly-dubbed National Air and Space Administration would indeed get humans to the moon by decade’s end.

Manned Space Center

On September 19, 1961, NASA announced that the Manned Space Center would be built on more than a thousand acres, 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston. The site grew rapidly in the early 1960s with buildings and personnel, along with engineers and scientists, and of course, astronauts. Houston immediately embraced its new neighbors and celebrated that they were now known as Space City.

The Moon

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”  

Apollo 11

In 1969, only eight years after Kennedy’s speech, Apollo 11 made the historic first lunar landing meeting the president’s goal. Astronauts left behind a plaque declaring, “We came in peace for all mankind.” On July 24, the Apollo 11 crew returned safely to Earth. Celebrating this momentous achievement with the rest of humankind were the flight controllers in the Mission Operations Control Room.

Johnson Space Center

In August 1973, on what would have been former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 65th birthday, his widow, Lady Bird Johnson, and her family joined NASA officials to dedicate the center in honor of the late president, a longtime champion of NASA. The year prior, President Richard Nixon approved the Space Shuttle program. The mighty minds at the JSC would be responsible for designing, developing, and testing the reusable orbiters for decades.

The Next Frontier

The final shuttle mission landed in 2011, when Atlantis touched down in Florida. The International Space Station, constructed from 1998 to 2011, supplied by the shuttle program and the aid of other nations, with 161 spacewalks and a combined 1,021 work-hours, opened on November 2, 2000. The Johnson Space Center manages ISS operations, and coordinates five space agencies representing 15 nations. To this day, astronauts are still trained at the Johnson Space Center, and space remains an important part of Houston’s identity.

Tragedy in the Rio Grande Valley

Tragedy struck in Alton, Texas, on September 21, 1989 when twenty-one students, on their way to school, died when a delivery truck collided with their school bus, spinning it into an excavation pit filled with water.

Accident

On the morning of September 21, 1989, a north-bound delivery truck blew through a stop sign, hitting a west-bound school bus on its rear-left side, and pushing it off the road. The bus, filled with children, crashed into an adjacent gravel pit, and became submerged in over 10 feet of water. Even though the open site was a well-known hazard, there were no fences or barriers. In the water, the eighty-one passengers fought to escape from the bus that was quickly filling with dirty water. Some found the rear emergency exit, others were able to open the sliding windows, some helped classmates. Twenty perished that morning, and another child died after the accident from their injuries.

“Everyone was screaming as the bus headed into the caliche pit which we all knew was full of water. As the bus was falling, I looked at the bus driver and saw his face had turned white.” – Survivor Edna Ortiz

Aftermath

The National Traffic Safety Board collected information on the crash, which would provide the evidence in the liability case. Lawyers descended on the small town, but many of these families were overwhelmed with offers from strangers, after experiencing the worst personal calamity of their lives. The delivery truck driver was indicted with twenty-one counts of involuntary manslaughter, but pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on $75,000 bond. The criminal case ended in an acquittal due to lack of probable cause. Civil lawsuits flourished around the accident, but the delivery truck’s owner Valley Coca-Cola paid for funerals, medical expenses, and even psychiatric treatment. There was no coverup, nor dodging of corporate responsibility. Blue Bird Company (the bus’s manufacturer) paid out $23 million in settlements to the victims and families, furthering the claim of the coroner that the accident was survivable if the students had only been able to exit the bus.

”Yet for the people of Alton, the scars and the memories remain, from its exploitation by unscrupulous lawyers to the jealousy and greed. It was a tragedy that compounded exponentially.”

Legacy

State legislators introduced a bill requiring guardrails around any open pits near roadways, and passed it into law in 1991. The new law, enforced by the Texas Railroad Commission, required that companies erect barriers around any open pits, or face fines of $10,000. Bus safety has improved too — buses now have roof and side exits, windows are enlarged, and rear exit doors open regardless of the effects of gravity.  And at the memorial site, a cross for each victim stands, allowing the community to keep them in their hearts and minds.