A trip to the moon, then and now ...

     Where were you 50 years ago Saturday night -- July 20, 1969, the immortal moment when a man first walked on the moon.
     "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
     Oh, Neil Armstrong you got it right. So did the United States of America. 
      It was a proud, and memorable, journey, a day and night to remember.
      In a sense, we all walked on the moon with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, didn't we? 
      And, how nervous were you?
      I have re-lived that adventure repeatedly the past week, still just fascinated by it. Recorded and watched about a dozen of the television shows recalling those great days in July 1969.
      Loved it then. Love it now. Still thrills me every time I hear the words -- after the descent of the lunar module to the moon's surface, and the touchdown -- "Houston, Tranquility Base here; the Eagle has landed." 
       It was nerve-wracking and sensational then. It remains, in my opinion, one of mankind's -- and America's -- most mind-boggling successes.
       How in the heck did we do that?
       It was the crowning glory of the 1960s Space Age, or the Space Race (U.S. vs. the Soviet Union). And those of us who grew up in the 1960s, when we were still schoolkids, can remember how many times we watched those rockets, with those men aboard, take off into space and beyond the grip of the Earth.
     Always exciting, always filled with danger and uncertainty. We watched with awe ... and we prayed.
     Concerning Apollo 11, we held our breaths at certain times: (1) The launch from the Cape; (2) the lunar descent and then the landing; (3) the small step; (4) maybe the scariest time of all, the takeoff from the moon ... what if that lunar module engine had not worked?; (5) the lunar module reuniting with the command module guided by Collins; and (6) the re-entry to Earth and the splashdown in the Pacific.
     It all went almost perfectly. What a blessing.
     It was a time when our country -- just as now -- was so divided in so many ways ... the Vietnam "war" (or conflict) with young Americans dying almost every day in a faraway place -- and the divisive debate, why we were there? Civil rights, being fought -- literally -- in the streets. A strange, paranoid, quarrelsome, media-bashing President who said he wasn't a crook until it became clear he was, whose enemies list exceeded the number of his blindly loyal followers. 
     But when it came to space, especially when it came to Apollo 11 -- Armstrong, Aldrin and Mike Collins, and all of NASA -- we all pulled together and rooted for the same team.
     Glory be.
---
     Apollo 11 took off from the Kennedy Space Center -- Cape Canaveral, Florida, to those of us who followed from the start -- on July 16, and it took three-plus days to get near the moon.
     Touchdown was at 3:18 p.m., Central time. As Armstrong and Aldrin sat on the moon surface, inside the lunar module, for some 6 1/2 hours, all of us sat with them.
     And ... then 9:56 p.m. Central, came the moment -- down the ramp, Armstrong's small step into history.
     Where were you? Bet you remember. It was one of those times you likely will not forget.
     I was in The Shreveport Times newsroom, just around the corner from the wire-machine room and the sports department. For about a half hour, work was not important.
     A small television set, maybe eight inches across, sat on managing editor Allan Lazarus' desk. Probably about 15 people crowded around to watch the black-and-white picture.
     We were in awe. As I recall, not much was being said.
     Laz, the man who always wore the green eyeshade, was in charge of the Page One operation, along with layout editor Danny Grant. Those guys knew what they were doing.
     I was in my first year, my second month, as a fulltime Times sportswriter, my first job. This was two months after college graduation and, after some five years as a high school/college kid working parttime in The Times sports department.
     Not sure what my tasks were that night shift, but I suspect -- looking at the pages from that day -- that I wrote a couple of stories on area baseball, one on American Legion junior ball (one of my regular coverage areas for about a decade).      But after about 9 p.m., I don't think I did any work for a couple of hours. I was in the newsroom watching that small TV.
     (Beatrice, then married to Jerry, recalls she was in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was stationed in the U.S. Navy, and they stayed up later -- Eastern time -- than normal. She, too, remembers being awed, proud and patriotic ... and scared ("the same things everyone else felt," she recalls).            Looking at The Times microfilm files from that Monday morning, I was dismayed at how disjointed and uninteresting our sports-page front page looked. Didn't even want to copy it for you to see.
     But I am proud to present a copy of the paper's Page One. Laz and Danny did a heckuva job designing it and writing the three-layer main headline. And I know that deep in my files here at our facility, a copy of that page sits in a file folder.  
      Watching the TV shows, I have seen a few seconds of that day's game at Yankee Stadium, the Washington Senators batting in the top of the eighth inning, tied 2-2 with the Yankees. The scene, at 4:18 p.m. Eastern time, flashes to the big old scoreboard in right-center field with the words "They're on the moon," the players turned to see that, and the crowd reacting with a standing ovation. 
     A great memory. A day and night, and a journey to always remember and cherish.
     In a sports-related memory of that year and that excellent adventure, I laugh at the thought of that era: A man will walk on the moon before the New York Mets ever win the World Series.
     That was true. But only by a few months. Because that October, in one of the most astounding, unbelievable  baseball developments in history, the previously always awful New York Mets did win the World Series.  
     By then, men had walked on the moon. Also unbelievable. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins were America heroes -- for all time.