With Texas Pride, Bush Takes a Stand at the Alamo

--”They died, but they didn’t die in vain,” Vice President George Bush told about 4,000 people in front of the aging stone shrine in San Antonio. “Without the Alamo, there would have been no Texas.” Bush rode a covered wagon at the head of a parade to the Alamo to help open celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico. The document was signed March 2, 1836, while the Alamo was the focus of a 13-day siege in which all 188 defenders of the old Spanish mission were killed by Mexican soldiers. “I’ve been all over the world, and let me tell you, all over the world, I’ve found that . . . people understand what it means to be a Texan,” said Bush, who has a home in Houston. “Being a Texan means optimism. Being a Texan means a special pride, a special determination, a special can-do spirit.” Bush was accompanied in the parade and on the speaker’s stand by San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros, who called on the crowd to imagine the scene at the Alamo 150 years ago. Bush spoke after 5,000 helium-filled red, white and blue balloons were released to the tune of “The Eyes of Texas,” in honor of the Alamo defenders.

--The greatest challenge the Peace Corps faces on its 25th anniversary is translating American idealism into dollars, its director said during a birthday celebration at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. “I see the same stars in the eyes of Americans that Sargent Shriver saw,” said director Loret Miller Ruppe, referring to President Kennedy’s brother-in-law, who was the Peace Corps’ first director. “Americans are willing to serve. The key question is, why aren’t more of them allowed to serve?” The answer, she said, is a limited Peace Corps budget of $124.4 million, less than what the country spends on military marching bands, and consigned to a miscellaneous category of foreign aid appropriations. There are 5,000 people a week expressing interest in volunteering for the organization, but limited funds constrain the corps to a current total of 6,000 volunteers.

--Paul Tavilla, 51, of Arlington, Mass., stretched his jaws and caught a grape after it plummeted 52 stories from a balloon over Tokyo’s teeming Shinjuku district. “It comes down at about 80 m.p.h., and it hurts when it reaches your mouth,” Tavilla said. Tavilla set the record at 660 feet, 2.6 inches, breaking his earlier record set in July, 1985, of 520 feet, 5 inches.