Publication: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette;Date: Sep 22, 2011;Section: Front Section;Page: 1
State’s ’76 moon rock turns up
It, plaque found in basement box
SARAH D. WIRE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Arkansas’ missing piece of the moon was found Wednesday in a box of materials from President Bill Clinton’s time as governor.
Who had the rock and where it was had become unclear in the years since it was presented to the state in 1976, when David Pryor was governor. Clinton succeeded him.
Some moon rocks have been purported to be worth millions of dollars.
This one, and the plaque it was once affixed to, was found by an archival assistant, Michael Hodge, while he was checking on mate- rials in a box that included a picture of ostriches, file folders and what appears to be a child’s drawing of a fish. He was working in the basement of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. The center is a joint operation with the Central Arkansas Library System.
Library System Director Bobby Roberts said he plans to talk with Gov. Mike Beebe’s office to determine which state museum will get the rock and the plaque.
“We have it in our possession, but it belongs to the state of Arkansas. It belongs in a state museum, not in our collection,” Roberts said. “It doesn’t belong to us, it doesn’t belong to Bill Clinton, it belongs to the people of Arkansas.”
Beebe’s spokesman Matt DeCample said where that rock and plaque end up will be decided in the coming weeks.
“We are going to look for a place where it can be securely kept and also viewed by the public,” DeCample said. “It’s a treasure given to the state.”
President Richard Nixon presented a moon rock to each of the 50 states, U.S. territories, 135 countries and the United Nations. Astronauts and the media deemed rocks taken from the moon’s Taurus-Littrow Valley during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission as the “Goodwill Moon Rocks.”
It was the United States’ last manned trip to the moon.
Arkansas’ 1.142-gram, or 0.0025-pound, stone was encased in a Lucite ball and was attached to a plaque along with a small Arkansas flag that had been taken to the moon on Apollo 17. The rock is about the weight of 1 1/2 paper clips and as long and wide as a paper clip.
A Feb. 29, 1976, article in the Arkansas Gazette said the rock was presented by Navy Cmdr. Dick Truly and that after receiving the plaque, Pryor’s special assistant, Richard Howell, gave Truly an Arkansas Traveler certificate.
Howell said he turned the rock over to the governor’s office. Staff members for subsequent governors didn’t remember having seen it.
Clinton was governor from 1979-81 and again from 1983-92.
Hodge found the plaque while cataloging some of the more than 160 boxes of gifts and memorabilia donated to the Butler Center from the years Clinton was governor. The Lucite ball containing the moon rock had been detached from the plaque but was in the same box.
“I saw the rock first, and I see strange things, because people gave him all kind of strange things, and then I pick up the plaque and actually read it,” Hodge said. “A lot of times I have to figure out what something is and where it fits in the larger picture. But this was a no-brainer.”
The project coordinator for the Bill Clinton State Government Project, Frances Morgan, said the other items in the box make her think that an employee was cleaning off a desk and put the items together. “It looks like it was just a hodgepodge of a box,” she said. Morgan said it is not clear who put the items in the box, but the box was dated 1983-1994.
“It was never lost, it was stored away,” Morgan said of the rock. “Somebody knew where it was. We’ll figure it out.”
She said the collection contains mostly staff papers from 1974-93. The Butler Center received the nearly 3,000 boxes in 2004.
Morgan said the plaque will be cataloged and stored until a decision is made about whether it should be displayed.
“I’m certain sometime down the road something significant will happen to it,” she said. Until then it will be kept in the staff-only area where “we seldom let strangers in ... so it’s in a very secure environment.”
Former NASA Special Investigator Joseph Gutheinz began searching for the rocks after participating in a 1998 NASA sting operation to stop the sale of an Apollo 17 moon rock that had been given to Honduras. The Miami dealer had sought $5 million for the Honduras rock.
Since 2002, Gutheinz has used his graduate students at the University of Phoenix in Arizona to track down missing moon rocks. His students have searched in Arkansas repeatedly with no luck.
“Finding a moon rock in a box like that, dear God. That’s wonderful,” Gutheinz said. “I think this goes into my top one, two, three, four, five moon rocks and being President Clinton it probably goes to No. 1.”
A student was currently searching for the Arkansas rock when Hodge found it.
“I feel bad for her,” Gutheinz said. “Definitely Arkansas was one of the big ones.”
Eight states and dozens of countries have lost track of their Apollo 17 rocks, according to collectspace. com/resources/moonrocks_ goodwill.html, the website Gutheinz’s students use to report their progress.
In the past 14 months, Gutheinz’s students have located moon rocks given to Colorado, Missouri and West Virginia — all of which were kept by former governors.
Gutheinz said it is odd that the rock turned up in Clinton’s papers when it had been given to the state before he was governor.
“You could see the governor that received it would have had it in his papers, but not a governor years later. Extraordinarily interesting,” Gutheinz said. “I’m sure that Clinton didn’t do anything inappropriate. I’m sure it was a staffer who put it in a box and thought it goes with him.”
Arkansas’ Apollo 11 moon rock was found in the collection of the Arkansas Museum of Discovery in Little Rock last summer. Seventeen states have misplaced their Apollo 11 moon rocks.
State’s ’76 moon rock turns up
It, plaque found in basement box
SARAH D. WIRE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Arkansas’ missing piece of the moon was found Wednesday in a box of materials from President Bill Clinton’s time as governor.
Who had the rock and where it was had become unclear in the years since it was presented to the state in 1976, when David Pryor was governor. Clinton succeeded him.
Some moon rocks have been purported to be worth millions of dollars.
This one, and the plaque it was once affixed to, was found by an archival assistant, Michael Hodge, while he was checking on mate- rials in a box that included a picture of ostriches, file folders and what appears to be a child’s drawing of a fish. He was working in the basement of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. The center is a joint operation with the Central Arkansas Library System.
Library System Director Bobby Roberts said he plans to talk with Gov. Mike Beebe’s office to determine which state museum will get the rock and the plaque.
“We have it in our possession, but it belongs to the state of Arkansas. It belongs in a state museum, not in our collection,” Roberts said. “It doesn’t belong to us, it doesn’t belong to Bill Clinton, it belongs to the people of Arkansas.”
Beebe’s spokesman Matt DeCample said where that rock and plaque end up will be decided in the coming weeks.
“We are going to look for a place where it can be securely kept and also viewed by the public,” DeCample said. “It’s a treasure given to the state.”
President Richard Nixon presented a moon rock to each of the 50 states, U.S. territories, 135 countries and the United Nations. Astronauts and the media deemed rocks taken from the moon’s Taurus-Littrow Valley during the 1972 Apollo 17 mission as the “Goodwill Moon Rocks.”
It was the United States’ last manned trip to the moon.
Arkansas’ 1.142-gram, or 0.0025-pound, stone was encased in a Lucite ball and was attached to a plaque along with a small Arkansas flag that had been taken to the moon on Apollo 17. The rock is about the weight of 1 1/2 paper clips and as long and wide as a paper clip.
A Feb. 29, 1976, article in the Arkansas Gazette said the rock was presented by Navy Cmdr. Dick Truly and that after receiving the plaque, Pryor’s special assistant, Richard Howell, gave Truly an Arkansas Traveler certificate.
Howell said he turned the rock over to the governor’s office. Staff members for subsequent governors didn’t remember having seen it.
Clinton was governor from 1979-81 and again from 1983-92.
Hodge found the plaque while cataloging some of the more than 160 boxes of gifts and memorabilia donated to the Butler Center from the years Clinton was governor. The Lucite ball containing the moon rock had been detached from the plaque but was in the same box.
“I saw the rock first, and I see strange things, because people gave him all kind of strange things, and then I pick up the plaque and actually read it,” Hodge said. “A lot of times I have to figure out what something is and where it fits in the larger picture. But this was a no-brainer.”
The project coordinator for the Bill Clinton State Government Project, Frances Morgan, said the other items in the box make her think that an employee was cleaning off a desk and put the items together. “It looks like it was just a hodgepodge of a box,” she said. Morgan said it is not clear who put the items in the box, but the box was dated 1983-1994.
“It was never lost, it was stored away,” Morgan said of the rock. “Somebody knew where it was. We’ll figure it out.”
She said the collection contains mostly staff papers from 1974-93. The Butler Center received the nearly 3,000 boxes in 2004.
Morgan said the plaque will be cataloged and stored until a decision is made about whether it should be displayed.
“I’m certain sometime down the road something significant will happen to it,” she said. Until then it will be kept in the staff-only area where “we seldom let strangers in ... so it’s in a very secure environment.”
Former NASA Special Investigator Joseph Gutheinz began searching for the rocks after participating in a 1998 NASA sting operation to stop the sale of an Apollo 17 moon rock that had been given to Honduras. The Miami dealer had sought $5 million for the Honduras rock.
Since 2002, Gutheinz has used his graduate students at the University of Phoenix in Arizona to track down missing moon rocks. His students have searched in Arkansas repeatedly with no luck.
“Finding a moon rock in a box like that, dear God. That’s wonderful,” Gutheinz said. “I think this goes into my top one, two, three, four, five moon rocks and being President Clinton it probably goes to No. 1.”
A student was currently searching for the Arkansas rock when Hodge found it.
“I feel bad for her,” Gutheinz said. “Definitely Arkansas was one of the big ones.”
Eight states and dozens of countries have lost track of their Apollo 17 rocks, according to collectspace. com/resources/moonrocks_ goodwill.html, the website Gutheinz’s students use to report their progress.
In the past 14 months, Gutheinz’s students have located moon rocks given to Colorado, Missouri and West Virginia — all of which were kept by former governors.
Gutheinz said it is odd that the rock turned up in Clinton’s papers when it had been given to the state before he was governor.
“You could see the governor that received it would have had it in his papers, but not a governor years later. Extraordinarily interesting,” Gutheinz said. “I’m sure that Clinton didn’t do anything inappropriate. I’m sure it was a staffer who put it in a box and thought it goes with him.”
Arkansas’ Apollo 11 moon rock was found in the collection of the Arkansas Museum of Discovery in Little Rock last summer. Seventeen states have misplaced their Apollo 11 moon rocks.