Reagan Awards Medals, Salutes Voyager Team

President Reagan saluted the crew and designer of the Voyager on Monday, presenting them with the Presidential Citizens Medal for the aircraft’s “fabulous flight” around the globe on one load of fuel.

“Nancy and I followed the Voyager’s progress along each leg of its fabulous flight, with alternating feelings of nervousness, and hope, and fear, and elation--but mostly an overwhelming pride in these two courageous Americans and their historic mission,” the President told co-pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager and Burt Rutan, the plane’s designer.

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

‘Imagination . . . Courage’

The President hailed the Voyager team as “heroes exemplifying the voluntarism, the enterprise, the imagination and just plain courage that make this country great.”

In a ceremony at the Century Plaza, First Lady Nancy Reagan pinned the medals on the right lapels of the Rutan brothers, and gave each a kiss. She handed the medal to Yeager, and also gave her a kiss.

For the President and his wife, the 12-minute ceremony was the only public event scheduled during their weeklong, year-end vacation in Southern California. For Yeager and the Rutan brothers, the ceremony was an emotional moment in which they cheered the volunteers who supported their effort and hailed “the freedom to pursue a dream.”

The presentation brings to 18 the number of Citizen’s Medals bestowed in its 13-year-history. The medal was established “for the purpose of recognizing citizens of the United States of America who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” the White House said.

Previous recipients include Frank C. Carlucci, a veteran government official whom the President has now chosen as his national security adviser; Hubert Dickey Ballantine and Martin Mathews, honored for their humanitarian work with youth in St. Louis; Dennis W. Keogh, a Foreign Service officer killed in a terrorist bombing in Namibia two years ago; and the late baseball player Roberto Clemente, who was killed in an airplane crash while on a relief mission to Nicaragua.

Volunteers on Hand

The award ceremony was held in front of a friendly audience of several hundred people--about half of whom were identified as volunteers who supported the Voyager effort. And it offered Reagan an opportunity to appear briefly in public in an upbeat surrounding, in which there was no reference to the Iran arms affair that has plagued him.

“This was done by individual citizens, citizens of this great land,” Dick Rutan said. “And we did so because we had the freedom to pursue a dream.”

His brother, saying that he was close to tears, saluted an environment “devoid of government regulations that would have made this thing impossible in any other country that I can think of.”

“I only filled out two pieces of paper for the U.S. government,” he said. They were “an application for airworthiness and an application for the tail number” identifying the airplane.

Recalls Some Concern

After Monday’s ceremony, Dick Rutan acknowledged that he was concerned as he approached Edwards Air Force Base last Tuesday at the end of the nine-day, 25,012-mile flight that “the wake turbulence” left by a PSA airliner would disturb the final moments of the journey.

Burt Rutan said “there was absolutely nothing illegal done by the PSA airliner,” and his brother, Dick, said that his concern turned out to be unnecessary because the jet “no way came close.”

“We never felt it,” Dick Rutan said of the mass of turbulent air that a jetliner leaves in its path.

The Voyager team has yet to drain the aircraft of the unused fuel. That will be done sometime early next month, the pilot said. But, he said, there was sufficient fuel to have carried the airplane to San Francisco--several hundred miles away.

It had been reported after the airplane landed that it carried just enough usable fuel to fly about 100 miles.

In the afternoon, the Reagans flew to Palm Springs, where they are spending the New Year’s holiday at the estate of former Ambassador and publisher Walter H. Annenberg.