A Hymn to Achievement

The same event of which I wrote in my prior blog entry generated more than just one media article, apparently. In the Summer 1973 issue of the Purdue Alumnus magazine, there appeared an extensive article about astronaut Eugene Cernan’s speech and its subject matter, as well as an additional photograph depicting my presentation to Cernan of a painting by my father.

MASSIMO GIORGINI, son of Prof. Aldo Giorgini, Civil Engineering School, presents an enamel painting to Capt. Cernan. Prof. Giorgini, who painted the large mural in the CE building, also painted the enamel for Cernan. In the background is a member of the Quarterdeck Society, NROTC honorary, and Gloria Peterson, a graduate student.

The caption above, which appeared alongside the photograph in the aforementioned publication makes mention of “the large mural in the CE building” painted by my father. The name of the work was Hymn to Achievement, and was a work done on commission for the Civil Engineering building on the Purdue University campus in order to commemorate the technological advances due to research in academic areas – as witnessed in engineering itself, for instance. The mural was unveiled coincident to one of the speeches by Cernan, entitled “Technology and Man’s Future.” However, far from being a mere glorification of the marvels of scientific breakthroughs, the mural also represented the awesome negative side of this same “progress” by displaying an image of a mushroom cloud, an animal skeleton, and a dying soldier vis-a-vis images representing religion, philosophy, and modern architectural structures.
Although some of the members of the committee that commissioned the work were contrary to the less than laudatory representation of modernization depicted therein, the agreement signed by my father included a provision for artistic license and interpretation, and thus the mural had to be accepted as painted. Furthermore, my father argued that a reminder of the importance of considering both sides of such equations was especially suitable to a speech regarding technology during a memorial conference to two men killed precisely by their interaction with a product of scientific progress.

Little Man With Man On The Moon

“Little Man With Man On The Moon” was the caption to this photograph, which shows me getting an autograph from Eugene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 space mission, and the last astronaut to step on the surface of the moon. The photo appeared on the front page of the April 19, 1973 edition of the Lafayette Leader, and shows me in full dress suit with bowtie, accompanied by my father, immediately following a speech by Cernan at a memorial seminar for Virgil Grissom and Roger Chaffee, two astronauts who died in an Apollo training capsule. The article marks my first appearance in the media following that in the May 23, 1968 edition of the Journal & Courier, which reported my birth the prior day in Home Hospital. My awareness of the inaccuracy of the press began right here in the text accompanying the photo, which states:

Little Massimo Aldogiogine appears a little “moonstruck”

as he patiently waits with his father for an autograph

from Capt. Eugene Cernan, USN, commander of Apollo 17

and the last man to walk on the moon.

Cernan, a 1956 electrical engineering graduate from

Purdue, returned to the campus Friday to speak at the

Grissom-Chaffee Memorial Seminar. Virgil Grissom and

Roger Chaffee, who dies in an Apollo capsule training accident

at Cape Kennedy in January, 1967, were Purdue graduates

as is Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon.

(Photo by Jesse McGreevy)

How the reporter managed to rend “Massimo Aldogiogine” from “Massimiliano Adelmo Giorgini” is one of the inexplicable mysteries that led to my choosing to go by “Mass Giorgini” by the time my first album was released many years later.