Just Like Story Musgrave: The American Dream

Sitting with my fellow graduates at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s Space Camp, I listened intently as Astronaut Story Musgrave spoke briefly about his phenomenal life. Musgrave never graduated from high school, instead he left his family’s dairy farm in Massachusetts to serve his country by joining the United States Marines. Serving as an aircraft electrician, engine mechanic, pilot, and parachutist, he excelled during his tour in Korea. For thirty years, he worked as an astronaut for NASA while moonlighting as a trauma surgeon. During Space Shuttle Challenger’s maiden voyage in 1983, he performed the first ever shuttle spacewalk. Musgrave has earned seven graduate degrees and was awarded twenty honorary doctorates. Today, he is a public speaker and consultant to both Walt Disney Imagineering and Applied Minds in California. Although the speech was brief, his words encouraged me, along with an auditorium full of other eleven year olds, to always have a vision for the future. My vision for America is that our great nation will become a land of dreamers again. Just like Story Musgrave, our nation’s past accomplishments are extraordinary. However, in order to remain a leader of the free world, we must forge ahead with new dreams and goals for the future. On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy …show more content…
Others will learn a trade and seek employment as construction workers, electricians, or mechanics. And I am thankful that many will join the United States military to help keep our country free. All of our dreams and aspirations are different but are all made possible because of the Declaration of Independence. Our first document of freedom which boldly proclaims that “all men are created equal” with the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of