Presidential Citizens Medal Recipients of Voyager
| Remarks
on Presenting Presidential Citizens Medals to the Designer and Crew of
the Voyager in
We laughed
and shook our head, but in a way understood the local official in Dick Rutan
has inspired a Nation with his record-setting, non-stop aerial
circumnavigation of the globe. A veteran of 325 combat missions during
the When Jeana
Yeager landed at Edwards Air Force Base, completing her historic and
record-setting non-stop flight around the globe aboard the Voyager, America
gained another hero. She reminded us all that aviation history is
still being written by men and women with the spirit of adventure and
derring-do. And to Elbert
L. Rutan: Burt Rutan
is the driving force behind the brilliant voyage of the aircraft he
designed and built. His initiative, originality, and entrepreneurship
have shown us anew the remarkable results that individual
determination and enterprise can attain, no matter how formidable the
challenge. The record-setting flight of the Voyager is an inspiration
to all America
. Dick Rutan.
Wow! [Laughter] Now, it's quite an honor to receive these citations,
but there's something very significant about what happened. And that
is that this was done by individual citizens, citizens of this great
land. And we did so because we had the freedom to pursue a dream, and
that's important. And we should never forget, and those that guard our
freedoms, that we should hang on to them very tenaciously and be very
careful about some do-gooder that thinks that our safety is more
important than our freedom. Because freedom is awful difficult to
obtain, and it's even more difficult to regain it once it's lost. So,
let's never forget how important it was, and we should hang on to it.
Another thing I want to say is that because of the individual freedoms
that we have, out in this room right here, the majority of you are
Voyager people, Voyager volunteers -- people that gave of themselves
for nothing, that they wanted to do
something significant. And all of you that were involved in this
thing, I want you all to stand up right now, and I want to applaud you
and accept this medal on your behalf because I'm proud to death of
you: the Voyager crew, ladies and gentlemen. [Applause] Thank you very
much. The
President. All right. Well, to you
and the many ground crew and volunteers who shared in the Voyager
vision, you're all heroes, exemplifying the voluntarism, the
enterprise, the imagination, and just plain courage that make this
country great. And you all make us proud to be Americans. I couldn't
help but think when Dick was standing here and talking about the
freedom we have and for Americans and individuals to do things of this
kind -- I was kind of thinking it was pretty funny that an ex-officer
of horse cavalry was here standing, handing out medals to somebody
that had flown around the world on a single tank of gas. [Laughter]
Thank you, and God bless you. Jeana
Yeager. I don't know really what to say other than we're very proud of
this, and I wish there was one other person here that has really
contributed to this program. He's been with us since the day we first
cut the glass on the airplane. That's Mr. Bruce Evans. But between him
and everybody else, thank you. Burt Rutan.
I hope I can do this. I've had tears in my eyes many times during this
flight, and I'm very close right now. I wanted to mention that this
aircraft was developed by a handful of private citizen-Americans who
were operating in an environment that allowed them the freedom for us
to create that airplane and to flight-test it and to reach around the
world with it. And I want to thank Ronald Reagan for providing and
maintaining this environment that was devoid of government regulations
that would have made this thing impossible in any other country that I
can think of. I only filled out two pieces of paper -- [laughter] --
for the U.S. Government. I'm serious. We have an application for
airworthiness and an application for the tail number on the airplane.
[Laughter] And that's the only two pieces of government regulations
that we had to do, to do this job. There were dozens of volunteers
helping for the world flight. It required a lot of weather support and
so on. But the actual building of the airplane was done over an
18-month time period with less than four people, average, working on
it to assemble the airplane. And I want to thank Dick and Jeana,
Bruce Evans, Mike and Sally Melville, John Runtz,
and the others who helped us launch that airplane and make my dream
come true. Thank you very much. Note: The
President spoke at 10:15 a.m.
in the Century Room at the Century Plaza Hotel in |
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The President.