NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

James Stevenson was too young to remember, but with the passage of time he has learned from his family that he was among 450 million people in front of television sets to watch Apollo 11 touch down on the moon.

Hours later, at 10:54 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, they heard Neil Armstrong say that he had just taken "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

With Gary Banziger recording, Barbara Lewis tells Chris Rink of her recollection of the day in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

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Stevenson was one of a group of people who were asked by Chris Rink, Gary Banziger and Sean Smith of the Strategic Relationships Office about their recollections of that signal date, four decades ago.

"I was just 3 years old, just a little kid at the time," Stevenson said. "I was a witness to history without even knowing it."

Frank Cotrupi was too young to forget.

"I was probably 10 years old and I fell asleep on the living room floor and my dad was supposed to wake me up and didn't," Cotrupi said. "I was upset the next morning when I found out that they had actually stepped on the moon. … I wanted to be awake. I wanted to see it."

A couple wouldn't have been anyplace else.

"The first thing I was feeling was immense pride in the country and in what NASA was accomplishing," Phillip Randall said.

Added Dick Daigle, who was in the Marine Corps in Japan on that day: "We had a little hooch downtown and we had scrounged up an old, clunky black and white TV. You used pliers to change the channels. We watched the whole thing, just a bunch of Marines drinking beer and rah-rahing the USA. Everybody was pretty excited."

Randall had little choice but to be aware.

"I was at my girlfriend's house, and her father was a career NASA man," Randall said. "He was a test pilot/engineer. He knew a lot of the initial test pilots who went into the Mercury program and who were there for the space program."

NASA Langley security guard Alfonso Holt tells SRO staff member Chris Rink that President Kennedy's prophecy was fulfilled when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

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That pilot was Jack Reeder, who flew airplanes, then later helicopters for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, then NASA.

Bob Martin not only remembers the man first walked on the moon, he uses the sequence of events in his spiel at Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton.

"I give tours here and I always ask kids who's the first man to walk on the moon," says Martin. "And most of them know: Neil Armstrong.

"And then I ask the question: Who's the second man to walk on the moon, because after all, he walked on the moon only a few seconds after Neil Armstrong? I give them a hint: his first name was Buzz. What do you think they say? Buzz Lightyear."

Buzz Lightyear, a character in the movie Toy Story, eventually became a cartoon character and action figure. That figure eventually found its way to space on the shuttle Discovery in the STS-124 mission last year. But the moon? It's Buzz Aldrin.

Most of the televisions in 1969 were in black and white, and the quality of the transmission from the moon to Earth "was almost surreal," remembers Catherine Adams. "It was like watching Twilight Zone."

She's not the only person to lend seemingly fictional stature to the scenario.

"I guess I was about 20, and as a kid, something like that was like science fiction that only a fiction writer could write," said Randall. "To suddenly be seeing something like that in reality was just spellbinding to me. It absolutely took my breath away."

Some refused to believe.

"To think that today, some people would think it was a hoax always tickles me because I know better," Ben Barker said.

But others not only believed, they saw it as fulfilled prophecy.

"I know that President Kennedy had said that we would put a man on the moon by the end of this decade," Alphonso Holt. "(And now) our technology had advanced to the point where we had put a man on the moon."

And some are old enough, yet young enough to embrace the idea of linking two visions, the past with the future. "It was amazing, something you never forget when you see something like that," said Charles Dunton. "Now, 40 years later, we're talking about going back in another 10 years or so. I hope to be around to see it."


 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Lineberry