In 2018, I was working on a full feature documentary on the second man on the moon, Gen. Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. 

 

I’ve known Dr. Aldrin for 30 years, we have become good friends through the decades, and he’s always been one of my heroes, as when I was nine years old, I watched him come out of the lunar module, and step onto the surface of the moon. 

 

It would be close to 30 years later, until I would finally meet him, and we would meet for coffee and speak about worldly, and out of this world things! He lived in the Los Angeles area at the time and I would often take him to the LAX airport. He would point at the moon and give me the coordinates where he landed! That was always an unbelievable joy, heading down the 405 freeway, knowing that I was the only one on the planet getting a coordinate by coordinate tour of the moon by a man who had been there. 

 

Fast forward to 2017, and the documentary I was working on about my hero fell apart for many reasons, so I decided to take a very long bike ride into the Santa Monica Mountains that would change my life. 

 

On that bike ride, I had a "field of dreams" moment, where I started thinking about monuments to build for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

 

I reached out to NASA, found a location at the Kennedy Space Center, and found $750,000 to build the Apollo 11 monument, celebrating the greatest story in the history of the world just in time for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. 

 

If you think about the fact that nobody had ever been able to build the monument to the greatest story in the history of the advancement of mankind until I was able to envision it, and I was able to build it with the greatest sculptors in the world, the Lundeen brothers, of Loveland, Colorado, you have to wonder why?

 

I have been wondering why for the last five years.

 

The best that I can come up with is that we all have a destiny, and we all have a purpose, and it seems that mine, was that of envisioning this incredible monument, and getting built, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. 

 

It would be easy to pat myself on the back and tell myself how brilliant I am, but none of that is true, and none of that is something I need to do. 

 

What is true is that I had a really, really, good idea at the perfect time to have that idea, and magic happened, at a level, that I never, ever thought could exist. 

 

Once I came through the unveiling of the monuments of Apollo 11, this greatest story the world had ever known, doors started opening in my mind that had never been opened before, and I started moving through them. 

 

I  was then able to envision the Apollo 13 monument, and reached out to Capt. Jim Lovell,  the commander of that incredible mission and he become my cheerleader. We had an unveiling for that monument after I raised another $750,000 at the Houston Space Flight Center, which happened in the middle of the pandemic. 

 

Although the unveiling was a bit underwhelming because of all the restrictions and the rules, the monument was anything, but underwhelming and it turned out to be another magnificent day, shining the light on American exceptionalism in monument form.

 

I kept thinking about this, and pressed forward with new ideas. Now it’s occurred to me that 75 women have flown into space and 25,000+ women have worked at NASA. Yet there was not one monument to any of them. 

 

I immediately thought of the first American woman in space, astronaut Sally Ride, and I found a location at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Long Island, New York. I was able to raise $300,000 for this monument and build it. We had an incredible unveiling on the 39th anniversary of her mission. 

 

Then it occurred to me that we had to bring Sally home, for the 40th anniversary of her mission. As she is a daughter of California, I reached out to the Reagan Library to build this second Sally Ride monument, and the CEO of the Reagan Library, who knew Sally, said this was a great idea because Ronald Reagan had been the president when she went up into space for the final time.

 

The Reagan library had just started a Reagan defense forum section of the library which contained an Abrams tank, a Stealth fighter and an F-14 Tomcat. Sally Ride would be at the entrance of that new section, greeting the 400,000 guests it would see each year. 

 

I was able to put together an unveiling on July 4 in front of 4,000 patriots for this unveiling, and Sally Ride’s 99-year-old mother and family, as well as major news outlets such as the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and Fox News, along with 55 affiliates across the country covered it. 

 

Once again, I’d love to say that I am some kind of brilliant auteur, but that’s simply is not the case. 

 

What I am, however, is a man who believes in America. I am like the man who gets up every single morning and swings the bat as hard as he can; a man who believes in his heart that if you have an idea and you have a vision, and you focus in on that vision, in America, you cannot fail! 

 

God bless America, and God bless the crew of Apollo 11, the crew of the Apollo 13, Dr. Sally Ride, and the 600 astronauts and explorers who have all launched on very, very, dangerous rockets, and gone into the 0G and the vacuum of the universe, and done what man does best which is to explore.