The photos, newspaper clippings of the moonwalk and even a box of spacesuits in the collection are getting increased attention as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of that historic walk on July 20, 1969.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have all of this great material from the Dayton Daily News Archive on the moon landing,\u201d said Dawne Dewey, head of Special Collections and Archives. \u201cIt\u2019s part of our amazing aviation history collections<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, two students interning at Wright State\u2019s New Media Incubator produced a video on the archives\u2019 aviation and space collection that included the Armstrong items. It was part of a series of videos funded by the Wright State University Friends of the Libraries.<\/p>\n Dewey said the archives\u2019 Wright Brothers Collection represents the beginning of the aviation age.<\/p>\n \u201cThe materials we have in the archives don\u2019t stop there. They keep going,\u201d she said. \u201cResearchers around the world may not think of our archives as having more recent materials. Our holdings cover aviation history from kites to the space age and include both military and civilian history, aerospace medicine and human factors engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n Sue Polanka, left, university librarian; Bill Stolz, reference and outreach archivist; and Dawne Dewey, head of Special Collections and Archives, with some of the archives’ materials related to the Apollo 11 mission. (Photo by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n The archives has many original photos of both a young Neil Armstrong and his days as an astronaut. It includes an autographed photo of the three Apollo 11 astronauts \u2014 Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. And there are photos of Wapakoneta residents preparing for a parade that would honor Armstrong after his return from the moon.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a hometown hero for Wapakoneta just like the Wright brothers were hometown heroes for Dayton,\u201d said Dewey. \u201cYou can draw so many parallels between the Wrights\u2019 story and Armstrong\u2019s story. And he revered the Wrights. He would have rather talked about them than himself.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to photographs, the archives has numerous newspaper clippings from the Dayton Daily News and the Dayton Journal Herald on the moonwalk and its aftermath. \u201cMan Walks on the Moon,\u201d \u201cOld Glory on the Moon,\u201d \u201cMoon Pioneers Back in Orbit\u201d and \u201cHeroes Safe Back Home\u201d are a few of the headlines.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very significant because the moon landing was a big part of a certain generation\u2019s experience,\u201d said Dewey.<\/p>\n A collection on aerospace medicine includes several space activity suits designed by Paul Webb, a scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think of the big bulky astronaut suits, but these were supposed to be very tight and were more mobile, said Bill Stolz, the archives\u2019 reference and outreach archivist. \u201cWe have a lot of prototypes he designed of all different sizes, different materials, different styles.\u201d<\/p>\n Special Collections and Archives recently received a call from NASA inquiring about the suits for the purpose of research into possibly using similar suits in missions to Mars.<\/p>\n The video series, called \u201cIn the Archives,\u201d was produced by students Amanda Harris and Nicolas Green. Supervised by Jen Ware, associate professor in the Department of Communication<\/a> and co-director of New Media Incubator, the students have also produced videos on Huffman Prairie, women\u2019s suffrage and Paul Laurence Dunbar.<\/p>\n \u201cThe archives contains so much life and history of our area and Dawne and her team are so knowledgeable that we want to be able to share those stories with other people,\u201d said Ware.<\/p>\n Dewey said the videos help spread the word about what\u2019s in the archives and the University Libraries.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the students are learning the craft of filmmaking and how to interview people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sue Polanka, university librarian, said the Friends of the Libraries is happy to support the video project.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt highlights our historical collections while using modern formats and channels students find very easy to use,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Green said it was nice tying the video to the Dayton area and early aviation history.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the jump into Wright-Patterson and the moon landing was really interesting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To commemorate the 50th university of the first moon landing, Wright State’s Special Collections and Archives gathered materials related to the Apollo 11 mission from its collections. Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/files\/2019\/07\/Special-collections-and-archives-moon-landing-50928_012-1-508x318.jpg\")
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