This is Todd Douglas Miller.
I'm the director of Apollo11.
I just want to take a minute and say thank you so much to everyone at National Archives,
from Dan Rooney, who really led the way with the project, and his staff to the Archivist
the United States, to everyone that worked on the contracts, the agreements, and on down
the line and everyone within the NARA network.
Dan and his team alerted us to this large-format material, which shifted the entire scope of
the project.
All of a sudden, it really wasn't about the film, it was much bigger than that.
It was about this preservation project.
The stars just really aligned to be able to take a large quantity of large-format material,
have it scanned, utilized for the film, but also to scan these materials to archive them
and begin the process of curating them for future generations.
So we can't thank you enough.
This film in all its various versions would not be possible without the wonderful work
and wonderful people at National Archives.
Congratulations for the amazing leadership you've shown all these years, making sure
that the important documents of our nation will not only be protected but also made available
to the people, we the people.
Brillat-Savarin, a French philosopher in 1826, he said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will
tell you who you are." I do believe I will do justice to those words because I will tell
you, "Tell me how our nation protects and shares the documents of our history, and then,
only then, we really will know who we are, where are we coming from, and more important,
where, all together, where are we going." On behalf of "we the people," thank you.
This is Carol Ann Atwood, she is the widow of Calvin "Cal" Atwood, who was an Iwo Jima
Marine and Cal passed away about a year ago.
In May, last year.
When Carol Ann was fixing to put together the plans for his memorial service she discovered
one thing, that she needed to prove that he was a Marine so he could get an Honor Guard
from our local Blount Island detachment here and get the honor guard for his service.
And Carol Ann called me, she said, Doug, I don't know where to start.
So I made a few phone calls and one of my Marine Corps friends said, well the National
Archives should probably have something, and I went, a bell rang off.
I just happen to know somebody that works in the National Archives.
So I called that young man and he said "well, that's what we do." So he gave me some
information as far as what they needed to go forward and I called Carol Ann and Carol
Ann said, "You know, I actually have his dog tags."
So with that information, and the estimated time of the service when he was in the Marine
Corps, World War II, Iwo Jima, that's kind of easy to narrow down.
And with that information, I passed that on.
And I got to tell you within about 24 to 36 hours we not only had the NAV MC 78 - PD form
from the crew in the St. Louis Archives, the staff that managed to come up with this,
but not only that, but we got his Purple Heart.
We have a notice of the wound that he suffered in Iwo Jima.
We got his presidential unit citation. And imagine this, they even came up with
a photo of Cal.
So, Carol Ann, what do you say?
I was so grateful to them and I had no place to look except to Doug Jordi and that's
when I said help I don't know what to do, I don't know where to put my hands on any
of this information and so I'm very grateful.
So to the National Archives, and the staff at St Louis and my contact there in the office,
a big thank you to y'all because that's how government should work and we really appreciate it.
Thank you very much. Thank you.