I was born in 1964. My earliest memory of my dad being awe
inspired was watching him watch a Gemini Space launch on the TV in late 1966.
Dad was a know-it-all, and he went to great lengths not to be impressed. I
watched him hold his breath as the rocket cleared the launch tower. I knew this
was a big deal.
By 1968 my parents divorced, and I lived with my
grandparents in Carmel, CA. My grandfather had been a science teacher after
graduating college in 1910. The space program had his full attention. We had
plastic Revell models of the Apollo command module, and the lunar lander which
we built. By the summer of 1969 my brother, and my grandfather were as
up-to-speed on the moon shot as any American could have been.
My grandfather would often sit back in his chair rubbing his
bald head as he marveled at the progress mankind had made since his birth in
1891. He has seen the first automobiles on a railroad flat-car rolling through
his hometown of Green City, MO. He had flown on a Wright-Flyer. His father’s
general store was the first place in town to have a telephone, and the whole
town would come to use it. He saw radio born and die. He saw his first movie in
1909, it cost a nickel, and there was no sound. He would later see the first “talkies”,
then see movies in color, and finally buy a television so he could watch those
movies in his living room.
Now his black & white television was going to show him
two men walk on the moon. He rousted us
from bed at five in the morning so we wouldn’t miss the launch. It was
important to him that we saw the launch, and took in as much of the event we
could. He kept saying things would never be the same if we landed on the moon.
I sat with my brother on the floor wearing my pajamas with the feet on them.
The Saturn V rocket rumbled on the screen as it lifted off. Frank McGee’s voice
narrated the whole thing. Once they were in orbit we all relaxed.
The three day flight was filled with updates here and there
which we never missed. The landing was
surreal. My four year-old brain was overwhelmed by emotions, and input as the
cardboard image of the lander stopped on the moon. Then the fuzzy image of Neil
Armstrong on the TV climbing down the ladder, and then his famous words. It was
late at night on the California coast. When the broadcast ended we all went
outside to look up at the full moon. For the first time in human history there
was someone in the moon looking back at us. The mission continued to the
splash-down without a hitch. We watched it all as a family.
Today Neil Armstrong passed away. I admired him for the
things he never did as much as for his Apollo & Gemini flights. He never
cashed in in his fame. He could have been everywhere. He could have been
insanely wealthy just for being the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong
embodied dignity. He was there for NASA when they would ask, but he never took
the spotlight away from what the agency was doing in the present. In so many
ways Neil Armstrong was the guy the world thinks of when they define what an
American is. Neil was always quick to remind everyone about all the people who
worked on the Apollo project, and they deserved more credit for their work
because they’d made it so easy to do his.
In today’s world of reality show douche baggery, millionaires
who are good with a ball who are assholes, and politicians who will throw their
own children into a bonfire to win Neil Armstrong stands in the minority we
once called MEN. The country has lost a
treasure today.
