When I entered today’s date in my day log, I had a thought – “there is something special about today…mmm…what is it?”. After a few seconds, I remembered – today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. It was 53 years ago today, and I have three memories relating to this that standout in my mind.
The first memory is the actual date. I was six years old, but my brothers and I had been watching all of the coverage on NBC, with Frank McGee as the anchorman, and sponsored by Gulf Oil (there was a Gulf logo attached to the anchor desk – outrageous by today’s standards). Anyway, it was late at night when the event happened (10:53 pm EST), I was living in Texas, so we were on Central time. The TV image was black and white and grainy. We had been watching for a long time, then Armstrong exited the Lunar Module and started down the ladder. To me, though, it seemed like he was standing on that ladder for at least 10 minutes. I finally got up from the couch, announced that I was going to bed, and left the room. I did not see the final descent on the ladder – but I WAS only six years old….
My second memory is working at NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There were a lot of events for the 25th anniversary in 1994, and one of them was a reunion at the Gilruth Rec Center on-site. The Apollo 11 astronauts were scheduled to appear, and I decided to go. The crowds were huge, and I never could get closer than about 5 feet to Armstrong/Aldrin/Collins – there were so many people who wanted to meet them. We did get commemorative pins for the anniversary at work.
The final memory was attending a banquet sponsored by the organization Spaceweek, originally started by a NASA employee by the name of Dennis Stone (now called World Space Week). I don’t remember if this was on the 25th anninversary or not (it was probably earlier). During the banquet, a film clip was shown of a speech by President John F. Kennedy on going to the Moon. The speech was at Rice Stadium in Houston, part of Rice University, a private university. The part of the speech that most people have heard is “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”. But before those words, Kennedy lists several difficult achievements (climbing mountains, flying across the ocean), then says “Why does Rice play Texas? Not because it is easy, but because it is hard!” I fell out of my chair laughing at this line! I went to the University of Texas when Texas played Rice in football, and we never lost to them when I was there. Indeed, Texas lost to Rice only once, maybe twice in their last 30-40 games, so this was a great bit in the speech, but I had never heard it until that banquet.
As a former NASA employee and still working aerospace engineer, I look back at those events with pride that I can say “I was there”, and that later I was able to be a part of the great organization that made that event possible. May we all have good memories to look back to in our lives…