Alan Stern sure did
From the press conference just after the launch of New Horizons:
"This was a textbook operation for a nuclear launch from the get-go. Safety always was first. I have July 14, 2015 emblazoned on my calendar. We are now certain of that. It will be the 50th anniversary to the day of the Mariner 4 flyby of Mars, the flyby that opened the reconnaissance of planets beyond Earth."
http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000435/
Technically, one should say that it was Mariner 2's successful flyby of Venus on December 14, 1962 that truly began "the reconnaissance of planets beyond Earth."
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/artifacts/SS-mariner2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_2