By Barbara A. Schmitz
Fifty years ago, the world watched in wonder as Apollo 11 approached the moon’s surface. People waited in front of their television sets, some for hours, to first see Neil Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin step out of the lunar module and stand on the moon’s surface.
For the first time ever, man inhabited the moon. It was history happening before our nation’s eyes, something that had seemed impossible just a few years earlier.
Charles Swain, EAA 28215, of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, remembers exactly where he was on July 20, 1969 — watching the landing and first steps on the moon from his black-and-white TV. In fact, he said it is one of those images that will forever be burned in his mind.
“I was in Beaver Dam, and I had a 10-month-old son, and I clearly remember the importance of what was going on at that time,” Charles said. “Amongst protestations from my wife, I got my son out of bed, and we watched from the floor.
“I saw the moon out the window as I watched Armstrong come down from the ladder,” he said. “Of course my son has no recollections.”
So where was his wife?
“Working in the kitchen,” Charles said. “I would holler when something was happening, and she would come running. She really didn’t realize then the importance of that event.”
Sammy Mobley, EAA 1172292, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was 14 years old in 1969 and said he was more interested in swimming and being with girls. But the country club where they went swimming had a teen room with a TV.
“We all watched the moon landing from there,” he said. “I wasn’t going to miss seeing the first man stepping on the moon, and it was pretty amazing. I can’t say I watched it all, but I remember wondering whether they knew what they were getting into, and if they would make it back.”
Jerome LaForest, of Pontiac, Michigan, was a senior in high school in 1969, but he most remembers a bet made by his father in the 1940s.
“During World War II, my father was on a carrier, but he made a bet with another sailor that by 1970, we would have put a man on the moon,” Jerome said. “That was in the early 1940s, and people thought he was crazy.”
He wasn’t crazy, and he won that bet.
Cathy Gustafson, of Kingwood, Texas, said she remembers her parents calling her and her siblings in around the television to see the Apollo landing.
Don Jeffries, EAA 371855, of Louisville, Kentucky, was 15 years old in 1969 and on vacation with his family and some friends in Daytona Beach, Florida. “The Apollo mission was a nonevent for the rest of my family, but I was very interested because I had always wanted to fly,” he said. “I watched it on the TV in the hotel, while the rest of my family stayed in the pool.”
John and Yvonne Slack, of Bonfield, Illinois, watched the Apollo landing from a neighbor’s home because they didn’t have a TV.
“I don’t think that any of us could believe that it was happening,” John said. “It was amazing. I remember that it took such a long time from landing until they stepped out. We kept watching and watching, wondering when it was going to happen.”
Yvonne also recalls the significance of the landing, but really remembers what happened to her as she watched history being made.
“My new pair of shoes got chewed up by our friend’s dog named Lonesome,” she said. “I was unaware of what the dog was doing because I was so involved in what was happening on TV.”
Apollo’s 50th
EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019 will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing with several presentations and a film remembering the people and the historic July 1969 flight that marked the first time men landed on the moon and returned safely.
From 7 to 8 p.m. Friday, four-time space shuttle astronaut Charlie Precourt will moderate a discussion at Theater in the Woods with Apollo 9 astronaut and lunar module pilot Jim McDivitt, Grumman lunar module engineer Dick Smith, and historian and author Robert Godwin. Then, from 8 to 10 p.m., Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins will be the featured guest as AirVenture commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Collins will be joined by fellow Apollo astronaut Joe Engle during the evening program, which will highlight the millions of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of people who made the first manned moon landing possible.
Also on Friday, from 8:30 to 10:45 p.m., First Man will be shown at the Airbus Fly-in Theater. The film stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and re-creates Armstrong’s research flights, the Gemini mission, and the moon landing.
In other presentations, Cam Martin will present “Neil Armstrong: Before the Fireworks,” from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Wednesday on Appareo Aviation Forum Stage 9, detailing Armstrong’s work from 1955 through 1962 piloting aircraft such as the X-1B, the X-5, and the X-15.