LIFE
Author: Gilda V. Bryant
Last week I found 225 Life magazines in Dad's faded red
barn. Sneezing and choking, I lugged the dusty, heavy boxes that
held the precious collection into blazing sunlight. I sorted
them, my eyes devouring the covers depicting smiling celebrities
and momentous events.
And I remembered.
Thumbing through one issue, I recalled America's love of
Hollywood royalty. I saw Liz Taylor, when she had only been
married three times and Grace Kelly before she became a real
princess. Other youthful stars smiled up at me - Ann-Margret,
Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton. I had forgotten how young and
glamorous they were when they appeared in glorious movies,
mainly with their clothes on and mostly without expletives.
Life reminded me of
the excitement of Sputnik, which forced the U.S. to explore the
heavens. John Kennedy called it the Space Race.
Wondrous flights with the magical, mythical names of Mercury,
Gemini, and Apollo ended with an astronaut taking the moon-buggy
for a spin among lunar craters. I relived for a moment the
amazement and almost worshipful attitude my folks had toward the
scientists and astronauts at NASA. My father, a World War II
pilot, pondered the incredible task of propelling the astronauts
into outer space to escape earth's gravity. But having the
ability to determine the exact location to drop the homecoming
capsule on our spinning planet--that was a miracle.
A Maytag refrigerator ad helped me realize that high-tech
conveniences like zip lock plastic bags, freeze dried food,
modern computers, and hand-held calculators evolved from space
exploration. Astronauts popularized Tang and thanks to my
mother's effort to support NASA's space program, I drank the
stuff until my teeth, tongue and lips turned orange--for weeks
at a
time. Most of the astronauts appeared on the covers of Life.
When I found the 1967 issue announcing the deaths of Gus
Grissim, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee in the fiery Apollo
conflagration, I felt shock and dismay again.
I remembered later
explosions--the Challenger and Columbia and their lost
crews. Racing into space triggered a renewed interest in
earth-bound science. An October, 1963 cover of Life hurled a
colorful, spiraling molecular model of deoxyribonucleic acid
into our home, enticing me to learn more about it.
DNA, an enormous
discovery by Watson and Crick, was worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Thirty-five years later, scientists have split strands of DNA
that revealed clues to cure debilitating diseases and assist law
enforcement agencies to prove a suspect's guilt or innocence.
They have managed the once unimaginable--to clone frogs, kittens
and sheep.
Time seemed to stop as I pored over the pages of Life. I
could almost hear my mother rattling pots and pans as she cooked
our evening meal while Walter Cronkite's authoritative baritone
voice boomed into the living room, "And that's the way it
is...". I imagined I heard the old blue pickup clang and
wheeze as Dad came home to us at the end of his busy workday.
Ahh--Life.
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