Rutans, Yeager Get Medals for Voyager ‘Right Stuff’

President Reagan bestowed presidential medals for achievement on the pilots and designer of the globe-circling Voyager aircraft today, saying their safe landing was “just about the best Christmas present America could have had.”

In a ceremony at the Century Plaza Hotel, the President presented Presidential Citizen’s Medals to pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager and Rutan’s brother, Burt, who designed the aircraft.

First Lady Nancy Reagan pinned the medals on the right lapels of the two men and handed Yeager her medal in its case.

“Three new names will be added to the column headed, ‘The Right Stuff,’ ” the President said.

“When we saw you coming back home, so ungainly and yet so graceful, flying into the desert landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base, that was just about the best Christmas present America could have had.”

The Rutan brothers responded by praising the American spirit of individual enterprise, which they said made their accomplishment possible.

The President said he and the First Lady, “with all of America . . . followed the Voyager’s progress along each leg of its fabulous flight with alternating feelings of nervousness and hope and fear and elation.”

After presenting the medals, Reagan, who served in an Army Reserve cavalry unit in Iowa in the 1930s, commented on the irony of “an officer of horse cavalry standing here handing a medal to someone who has flown around the world on a single tank of gas.”