Beginning 2007 with a letter dated 22 September 1962. I'm getting the date from the envelope - and changing said date. I could swear the envelope says 1961. But it simply cannot be. I graduated from high school in 1961. By September, I have barely started college and possibly don't even know who this guy is, not to mention having any idea of the drama/s to come. So - Ft. Knox, from where this is posted, has erred somehow. 1962 it is.

JFK has given a speech at Rice University on going to the moon. I don't know if this is THE moon speech, but according to Google is the "Rice Moon speech." Here is an excerpt:

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. 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, and the others, too."

Larry is simply in the Army, as males did then upon finishing college. I think there was a draft. Viet Nam is just a twinkle in someone's eye. Someone's advisory eye. As for the letter, I detect trouble to come, if only because he tells me, "As for your activities at C.C. (Carthage College), etc., you are not free to do what you plese. You must realize that you are bound by certain mores to which you must conform. You know what is expected of you and you can use your own discretion if in doubt, or you can discuss it with me whenever possible."

I have no idea what he is talking about. Seems I wrote to him that some people were questioning my activities as an "engaged person." I know, even today, how I would have reacted to people questioning my activities, and even more so to someone telling me that I was "bound by certain mores..." He was right, of course, but in those days, those were fightin' words! I wasn't even being bad yet. But when, by the end of the school year, it became possible for me to be bad, I'm certain I remembered these words and stuck out my lower lip in a stubborn pout. I know that look well. I've seen it on my daughter's face.