THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407210244
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 58 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY SYBIL DANIELS ROSS
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
Sybil Ann Dough was only days away from being 8 years old as she stood with her father and others on the huge dune in Kitty Hawk. It was blowing and cold. She remembered her mother talking about the Wright brothers and the foolish and outlandish thing they were doing. Man is not supposed to fly.
She went to the Coast Guard Station with her daddy that day, and the Wright brothers asked the Coast Guard to assist them in their experiment. So, there she was on the dune, cold, puzzled and not really aware of the significance of what she was witnessing back in 1903.
The real impact of that came as we sat together 25 years ago and watched man land on the moon.
Sybil Ann Dough, now Granny, was 73 and I was 22. I saw the wonder and amazement on her aging face as she viewed the moon landing on television. America was united in support for the space challenge and the whole world was watching. Would it really happen? Could we prove beyond all doubt that America was a leader in space? You bet we did! And no one was more proud than she. After all, she was an unwitting participant in the birth of aviation.
Over the years I asked what she remembered about that fateful day in what was then still Kitty Hawk. She always replied that she was so young when she saw the first flight and had read so many different accounts of the event over the years that she could not distinguish between what was remembered in fact and what had been read. Granny declined interviews when approached by reporters and historians because it had become a blur to her.
I am sorry today that I did not try to find out more from her about the involvement of other members of the family in the first flight. She died in 1978 and was the last of the first flight witnesses.
As we watched the moon landing, I thought about the great accomplishments in many fields that had been developed in her lifetime - penicillin, radio, nuclear power, air conditioning, television, computers, airplanes, space ships and more.
What science fiction would I see come true in my lifetime?
Well, now I am 47 and after considerable reflection of the last 25 years, I am astonished that no other single event seems to compare in magnitude to the moon landing!
Did that event set our expectations of future accomplishments so high that nothing else cold compare? Or have the accomplishmnts been so fast and furious that they are now commonplace? Are there no new horizons as exciting? Is there nothing left to rally our nation to unity other than war?
These thoughts bothered me so I brought them up in a conversation with Vera Evans, Carl Hayes and my husband, Bo. Vera suggested that technology was expanding in areas that did not directly touch peoples' lives and perhaps it is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing.
But, do we ever think about how technology touches our lives? Have we lost a sense of gratitude for the things that make our lives easier? Is this because our lives are too easy?
Bo reminded us that some technology can be irritating. His pet peeve was the ``If you have a Touch Tone phone, press 1 for . . . ''
Carl commented that perhaps technology was a detriment to cohesion if people knew more about less, because of specialization, and we're becoming isolated from one another.
We can work at home, communicate with the office by computer, instantaneously transmit information, shop and pay bills by computer, interact with television game shows, watch news 24 hours a day, call up The New York Times and Wall Street Journal on the computer, watch zillions of TV channels by satellite, get mail on Compuserve and voice mail, and on and on.
Could this technology isolate us beyond common community? Well, I don't think anyone has figured out how to have interactive sex with the televisions and computers yet, but the 900 telephone numbers could be getting close.
The big question is - Is this exciting or what? Well, not to me, not the way the moon landing was. Did landing on the moon make my life richer? Yes, definitely, and it made me proud to be an American and to witness mankind's advancement in aviation from its humble beginings in Dare County.
Has the technology of today made my life richer? Most definitely. But we have AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, hungry children, homeless people, environmental degradation, a world ill at ease with peace, and many more ills. There are many challenges remaining today. If we can approach them with the same spirit, unity, and enthusiasm we had for the space race, we will reach new heights with our accomplishments.
We might even in our lifetime see a range of changes that would equal the changes that took place during my grandmother's life. MEMO: Sybil Ross is an environmentalist who was born and lives in Manteo.
by CNB