By GABE JORDAN
gabe.jordan@gaflnews.com
CORDELE — Thousands of tourists pass through this city each day on Interstate 75, and many of them no doubt scratch their heads and wonder, “What is that rocket doing here?”
“That was the very point,” John Pate said Thursday at a ceremony marking the 40th birthday of the iconic Titan missile. “It’s a unique and unusual landmark for Cordele and Crisp County.”
Pate was the incoming president of the local Rotary Club in 1967, when the Cold War and the Vietnam War were at their height. I-75 was brand new and gasoline cost less than 20 cents a gallon.
“We were trying to come up with something that would make our community stand out,” Pate said. “I had visited Cape Kennedy that year and learned the Air Force was decommissioning the Titan missiles.”
Pate was able to secure the loan of a missile from the U.S. Air Force, Tony and Martha Jane LaPorte donated a plot of land, and the Rotary Club raised money to buy materials that were crafted by workers at Harris Press (now Harris Waste Management) into a base for the rocket.
The rest is history.
“The missile was flown from California to Robins Air Force base on a training mission, and we trucked it with the help of the Air Force to Cordele,” Pate said. “Thanks to Randy Folsom’s donated crane, we were able to raise the Titan one stage at a time.”
Pate recognized two people who were crucial to the actual raising of the missile. He said Billy Raines and Gene Kelly “were indispensable to what became a very difficult — and dangerous — task.”
USAF Lt. Col. Mike Ziban was on hand for Thursday’s birthday celebration, and he said the difficult work was worth the effort.
“I’ve traveled in something like 30 different countries and I remember seeing only one or two Titans on display,” Ziban said. “So Cordele truly is unique.”
Cordele’s Titan missile is situated on property now occupied by the local Texaco station and the local Krystal restaurant, whose employees tend the grounds that are the home to the south Georgia landmark.
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