Looking at Earth (Day) with a View from the Moon:

Earth Day, a celebration of clean air, land, and water, is coming up on April 22nd. Earth Day began in 1970 as part of a newly-developing environmental movement. But did you know, the environmental movement really took off, so to speak, far away from the Earth, with the Apollo space missions?

The Apollo missions, which began in 1961 and concluded in 1972, brought back to us Earth-dwellers inspiring photographic images that set our startlingly blue orb of a planet in stark contrast to the blackness of space. The first photo of the Earth taken from space by a human (as opposed to images from unmanned observation flights or satellites) became known as the “Earthrise” photo of the Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon on Christmas Eve, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. The most famous of the Apollo Earth photos became known as the “Blue Marble,” a portrait of the Earth taken on Dec. 7, 1972, during Apollo 17. Over 50 years later, the Artemis II mission has been recreating many of these same photographs, with technological upgrades, such as the “Hello, World” photo of April 3, 2026, that catches the Earth in the same “pose” as the Blue Marble.

Perhaps the most famous of the Apollo missions was Apollo 11, which launched July, 1969. Its lunar landing module put humans, astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, on the moon for the very first time. In 1989, the Shreveport Times did a 20-year retrospective story on locals’ memories of that day, and their own special connections to the event. At least half of the group were Bossierites, including John and Maybelle Manry of Plain Dealing. Mr. Manry’s memories and reactions were fascinating, because as a native of the year 1903, his memories predated the arrival of automobiles in his hometown. And Maybelle Manry pointed out how exciting the Apollo missions were to her, because their son Charles Manry, was a crucial part of the mission.

John Ardis Manry was a printer, regional historian, photographer, and genealogist who for a while was publisher of the Bossier Banner newspaper and worked for the Shreveport Times. He was born two weeks before brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took their famous flight in December, 1903. He remembers the “pop-pop-pop” sounds of the first Model T Ford automobiles in town keeping neighbors awake in Plain Dealing. He watched the first hot air balloon liftoff from Bossier Parish soil in 1915 and thought that the pilot “had gone to heaven right there.” The moonwalk of Apollo 11, though, “was the greatest thing that ever happened in my 85 years,” he said. Mr. Manry remembered, “We saw every bit of it we could and we read everything we could.” He reminisced that before that, the most fantastic thing they’d personally seen was the sending of the first newspaper wire photo in 1935, “a marvel.”

At one point in Mr. Manry’s remisncenses of Apollo 11 for the Times reporter, his wife Mrs. Maybelle Manry interjected that really the missions were so interesting to them and that they didn’t miss a minute of coverage of it was likely due to the fact that they “had a child involved in it.” The Manrys’ son Charles E. Manry, a 1954 graduate of Plain Dealing High School, majored in physics at Georgia Tech. Following college, he entered the US Navy working as a “radio man” and as an electronics instructor and then worked in the Naval Ordnance Design station in California, developing the technology to photograph the ocean floor. In 1963 he went from exploring the ocean floor to exploration of space, by moving to Houston and taking a job with NASA.

At NASA, Manry designed the guidance system that was used on the Apollo spacecraft and personally trained each astronaut in how to use it. He became an expert in manned space flight and in 1971, in the thick of the Cold War, was selected as member of a team of physicists sent to Moscow to work out a joint rendezvous and docking system. These systems were to allow US and Russian spacecraft to link up in space, and give each country the ability to rescue the other’s astronauts or cosmonauts in space. As a part of NASA’s Manned Space Center, Guidance and Control Section in Houston, Charles Manry had worked in the Gemini manned space program, and he also helped create the NASA computer programs to map the Space Shuttle's routes. He then worked for the Martin Marietta company in Denver and passed away in Colorado in 2011.

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s space or environmentally-minded citizens, we’d love to see or hear them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA and are open M-F 9-6. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• NASA’s Apollo 8 Earthrise photo
• John and Maybelle Manry on their 50th anniversary, BPLHC photo
• Charles Manry as a boy, BPLHC photo

Article by Pam Carlisle 

Looking at Earth (Day) with a View from the Moon:

Earth Day, a celebration of clean air, land, and water, is coming up on Saturday, April 22nd. Earth Day began in 1970 as part of a newly-developing environmental movement. But did you know, the environmental movement really took off, so to speak, far away from the Earth, with the Apollo space missions?

The Apollo missions, which began in 1961 and concluded in 1972, resulted in inspiring photographic images of our startlingly blue orb of a planet set in stark contrast to the blackness of space. These included the first photo of the Earth taken from space by a human. It became known as the famous “Earthrise” photo of the Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon on Christmas Eve, 1968, from Apollo 8. Another famous image became known as the “Big Blue Marble” photo of the Earth on Dec. 7, 1972, from Apollo 17.

Perhaps the most famous of the Apollo missions was Apollo 11 of July, 1969, with its lunar landing module putting astronauts (Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong) on the moon for the very first time. In 1989, the Shreveport Times did a 20-year story on locals’ memories of that day, with their own special connections to it. At least half of the group were Bossierites, Debo White Harris (now Dykes) then of Bossier City, and John and Maybelle Manry of Plain Dealing.

Mrs. Harris was one of the top finalists in the Teacher in Space program in 1985, and was a NASA space shuttle trainee. She spent eight days in 1986 at Cape Canaveral, Florida before the tragic launch of Space Shuttle Challenger, on which her friend and fellow teacher Christa McAuliffe perished. Following Challenger, Mrs. Harris (now Dykes) continued promoting space and science education, including as NASA Regional Resource Center at Bossier Parish Community College, supplying NASA materials and programs to schools within and beyond Louisiana.

Mrs. Harris said the moonwalk in 1969 played a part in what she has become: “I always had been a science buff. I used to think, ‘What I wouldn’t give to be up there.’” On that Sunday evening, July 20, 1969, teenaged Debo went outside her parents’ Bossier City home and looked up, wondering if she could see them (the Apollo crew and spacecraft) and imagined that she did. She dreamed of “floating” in space herself and how much fun that would be.

Though she didn’t make it all the way to space, Debo Harris Dykes did get the opportunity to experience that floating, weightless feeling after conceiving of an antigravity teaching project, Project Oeillades. Launched by NASA, with the participation of space shuttle commander and Air Force Col. Brewster Shaw, to help school kids understand Newton’s laws of physics, the project took flight in Fall 1988 with Mrs. Harris and Col. Shaw in a padded cabin in a Reduced Gravity Aircraft (KC-135). Mrs. Harris made 14 flights into weightlessness to demonstrate crucial laws of physics by videotaping experiments with simple toys such as a football, a hula hoop, and a seesaw.

John Ardis Manry was a printer, regional historian, photographer, and genealogist who for a while was publisher of the Bossier Banner newspaper and worked for the Shreveport Times. He was born two weeks before brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took their famous flight in December, 1903. (He passed away in 1993). He remembers the “pop-pop-pop” sounds of the first Model T Ford automobiles keeping neighbors awake in Plain Dealing. He watched the first hot air balloon liftoff from Bossier Parish soil in 1915 and thought that the pilot “had gone to heaven right there.”

The moonwalk, though, “was the greatest thing that ever happened in my 85 years,” he said. Mrs. Manry said that was “probably because we had a child involved in it.” At the time, their son Charles, a graduate of Georgia Tech University, was working for NASA’s Manned Space Center, Guidance and Control Section. He later worked for Martin Marietta in Denver. He passed away in Colorado in 2011.

Charles’ proud parents remembered of Apollo 11, “We saw every bit of it we could and we read everything we could.” Raising their kids in Plain Dealing in the 1930’s, they wouldn’t have imagined anything like the Apollo program, Mr. Manry said. In fact, he reminisced, the most fantastic thing they’d personally seen was the sending of the first newspaper wire photo in 1935, “a marvel.” Mrs. Manry added that when she was young, “I thought everything in the world had been discovered that could be discovered. There was nothing else. Just look at what we’ve done since I grew up.”

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s space or environmentally-minded citizens, we’d love to see or hear them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, 

Images: 

• Debo White Harris Dykes “floats” through a hula hoop in the weightlessness of NASA’s training jet. (Photo taken for Florida Today, 17 September 1989.
• Photograph of Maybelle Francis and John Ardis Manry on their 50th Wedding Anniversary, Oct. 17,1977.
• Photograph of Charles Manry playing in the Coushatta Bluffs near Plain Dealing, LA c. 1951.

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Bossier’s Earth Day Heroes: MARTHA “DIANNE” WALSWORTH CHANDLER & RUTH TUPPER

 Earth Day is around the corner (April 22nd), and March, Women’s History Month, is now over. But when it comes to stewardship of the environment, local women are still front-of-mind. There are two inspired and inspiring women in recent Bossier history whose names especially seem synonymous with the goals of Earth Day, a celebration of clean air, land, and water: Dianne Chandler and Ruth Tupper.

MARTHA “DIANNE” WALSWORTH CHANDLER

Dianne Chandler was Bossier City’s Clean City Committee Chair from 1986 until her death in 2002. Under her guidance, the city was honored as “Cleanest City” for at least five years. She served as the city’s Recycling and Environmental Enhancement Coordinator, Bossier Parish’s Recycling Planner, Bossier City’s Director of Solid Waste, Keep America Beautiful National Representative, and a member of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s Litter Task Force. She organized litter cleanups that would involve hundreds of volunteers, including schoolkids, which she loved. She valued those efforts not just for the pounds of litter picked up but because, “when you do that, you find you have a lot of feelings about it such as anger at the way people abuse the environment. You’re out there and pick it up and you think about things like how the state spends more than 17 million a year picking up litter.” She also organized cleanups of Lake Bistineau. 

A native of Jonesville, Louisiana, a 1960 Bossier High School graduate and an Air Force wife, Dianne went back to college for her degrees after her two boys were grown and husband retired from the Air Force. Her goal was simply to find a job that was “special” and she felt extremely fortunate to have found that with the Clean City Committee job. It allowed her to work with “every facet of the community, [and] get to work with everybody – the government, the children in the schools and with the men in the sanitation dept, just everybody.’’ She told the Shreveport Times in 1988 when she was interviewed for its “VIP” column, “This position is in a way very idealistic, but at the same time it is a necessity. Solid waste management is going to be a big, big industry; everyone knows the problems we are having with our environment. And the ramifications that cleanliness and aesthetics have on industrial development are part of it.” 

When Dianne Chandler passed away of cancer at age 60, Lo Walker, then Bossier City Chief Administrative Officer and later Mayor, gave the eulogy at her funeral while fighting back tears. “She was the perfect example of a dedicated public servant,” Walker told the crowd at the Bossier Civic Center. “She was the heart and soul of efforts to clean up Bossier City.” Fellow committee member Mary Caplis of Elm Grove wrote in an editorial, “I hope a person of Dianne’s vision and vitality is waiting in the wings to carry on the torch she has lit for the benefit of Bossier City, Bossier Parish and the Ark-La-Tex.” Perhaps the simplest and most memorable tribute came from journalist James Wellborn: “If you really want to be remembered, write something or plant a tree. Dianne Chandler planted trees, and she will be remembered for it. “ 

RUTH TUPPER

“Miss Ruth” was an avid recycler and organic gardener who lived a minimalist lifestyle by choice to support her values and philanthropic causes, especially for the environment and animals. With money largely saved from a modest salary as a bookkeeper (she retired from McClamroch Machinery Company), she once was the largest single contributor to the Louisiana chapter of the Nature Conservancy, through which she hoped to do her part to heal Louisiana’s natural environment. Doing more than just write a check, she attended volunteer days and group walks, and visited the sites she helped to preserve. An avid reader, she kept well-informed of issues such as clean water and clean air. She also contributed to a wide array of local and national charities such as the Humane Society, ASPCA, the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, Earth Justice, the Wilderness Society, American Institute of Cancer, the Salvation Army, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “just to see what they’d do next,” she quipped in 2002. 

As a teen and young adult, Miss Ruth could be found frequently mentioned in her hometown papers and local agricultural news in rural Jeff Davis Parish as school valedictorian at Roanoke High School in 1940, as participant or organizer of school or church activities, and especially in mentions of her agricultural skills. Reading these, it becomes apparent where her love and concern for the health of the land came from: her childhood in Welsh, Louisiana on her father’s rice farm. One article, written in 1941 in the Lafayette newspaper the Daily Advertiser, was titled, “Poultry Raising Brings Big Returns on F.L. Tupper Farm – Ruth Tupper, Daughter of Jeff Davis Farmer, Big Boss of Poultry Department.” She also periodically had ads in the local papers where she was selling plants she grew and sold, such as strawberry and tomato plants and was mentioned for her prize-winning flowers. 

Extremely frugal and modest, the adult Ruth Tupper is basically invisible in the Shreveport and Bossier newspapers, with the noted exception of the Forum newsmagazine’s cover story about her in September, 2002. The article is titled, “Sweet Charity – the inspirational story of how Miss Ruth gives back to the world,” describing her philanthropy “far from the social scenes” typically associated with philanthropists. Folks would see her out collecting cans and assume she was homeless. When they’d insist on handing her a dollar bill, she would smile and accept it. She was a beloved patron at the Bossier Central Library through the first decade of the 2000’s and was famous for her beautiful homegrown tomatoes she would give away by the bushel. She grew her all her vegetables organically, making her own compost. “I was organic before organic was cool,” she happily paraphrased to the Forum writer. Ms. Ruth passed away in 2012 at the age of 89. 

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s civic-minded women, or environmentally-minded citizens, we’d love to see or hear them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Proud of Our Beautiful Bossier

Nickel Collection: 2004.019.036

Every year, since 1958, the Louisiana Garden Club Federation, Inc. sponsors a statewide “Cleanest City Contest.” According to its website, “The aim of the contest is to instill civic pride in the individual citizens and thus, improve the appearance of towns and cities.”

When a village, town, or city enters the contest, they are placed into categories based on their size and population. Bossier City has often been the proud recipient of the “Cleanest City” award over the years. But, even before these contests, community organizations, the city government, business owners, and residents often worked together to clean up and to beautify the city, which is the key to Bossier’s success, teamwork. The great citizens of Bossier Parish have always taken civic pride in their community. 

In 1966, a proclamation was issued by Mayor George L. Nattin at the behest of the Bossier Garden Club, a unit of Keep Bossier Beautiful, he declared March as “CLEANUP MONTH.” In the proclamation, Mayor Nattin called on the citizens of Bossier City to “cooperate fully with the Bossier Garden Club in making this a successful project.” The declaration was issued along with an announcement that the Bossier Garden Club had again entered the “Cleanest City” contest. 

In The Bossier Tribune, on Mar. 30, 1966, it was announced that a “candid camera approach” would be used “to promote the civic campaign to win the ‘Cleanest City’ competition which will be judged April 26.” Residents were urged to make their homes and businesses “neater in appearance because a roving photographer is on the loose snapping pictures of places with untidy appearances.” 

A poster contest was also announced, “Members of the sixth grade classes in the Bossier Elementary Schools are making posters to be used in the ‘Cleanest City’ competition. Posters will be ready for judging Friday.” The posters had to pertain to the beautification of the city, and prizes were awarded to the top three posters. 

“To encourage citizens to do their part to help win” in an editorial written by Mrs. W. E. Piper, chairman of the “Cleanest City” contest, she ended her message with, “...Our cherubs and their off-springs twenty or thirty years from now will see the interest we took in 1966. So in 1986 they can be proud of our Beautiful Bossier City!” 

This desire came true because thirty years later, Bossier City won the “cleanest city” award for 1996. In presenting the award to Mayor Dement, the president of the Louisiana Garden Club Inc., Bera Smith declared that “This is getting to be a habit, I hope you have room left on your wall.” 

It is safe to say that we all can be grateful for the interest everyone took not only in 1966 but in all the years before then and ever since. 

While the annual Louisiana Cleanest City Contest had to be canceled this year, we can still do our part in keeping Bossier Beautiful. With today being Earth Day and with so many of us home during the COVID-19 shelter in place orders, it is a great time to get in the yard and tidy up. 

By: Amy Robertson