In July, 1970, our family traveled from our home in Minnesota to the Houston area to visit cousins. I was eight years old. While there, my parents decided to take us to the NASA headquarters, mission control and training facility in Houston, for a tour. To our great disappointment, when we arrived at the NASA facility, we found the entire complex closed to visitors for that particular day. My mother approached the guard booth and begged the men inside to make an exception. They said they could not. My mother again asked if we could just come inside and take a peek at the facility, as we had come a long way to visit and would not likely be able to make another visit. She mentioned about the three of us kids being very disappointed.
All of sudden, to our surprise, the chief administrator came out to tell us we would be allowed inside the complex and taken on a guided tour by him. He then took us on an unprecedented, insiders' tour of every part of the complex, including the simulated moon surface and other areas no visitor was allowed to see. But the part of the tour I was most unprepared for and could not have anticipated in my wildest dreams came at the end of the tour:
We were seated in front of the facility, where a phalanx of armed security guards brought out a small container with a clear dome on top. When the container was passed to me, to my great thrill and utter awe I could see I was holding what was at that time the most valuable substance on earth: a sample of rock from the moon. I could not believe they let us handle one of the few samples that had been collected only one year after the first humans stepped foot on the moon.
When we were back home in Minnesota, my mother sent the administrator a long letter of thanks, along with a gift. He wrote a warm letter back to her in response. My mother (84 now) recently told me that, when they let us into the NASA facility, a carload of tourists from Japan was turned away. We still can't believe our luck on that sweltering day in Houston all those years ago, and the generosity of the administrator, who surely had many tasks he needed to accomplish that day, but who nevertheless chose to give us a priceless and unique experience we will treasure for the rest of our lives.