Apollo Eleven Anniversary

It is now July 16; I remember fifty years ago, when my mother put me in front of the television set, and told me that they were going to send men to the moon. I was four years old, and I had a book about the solar system and basic astronomy. To the extent I can reconstruct my thoughts, I knew what was out there, and had vaguely wondered whether going to celestial bodies was something that was ever done. Now I knew that going at least to the moon was something that people were undertaking to do.

Days later, I would see and hear the astronauts on the moon; I remember being with my father when I watched that on TV.

Decades later, I was to sit in the back of an auditorium where Buzz Aldrin gave a talk.

I hear Leslie Fish’s scratchy voice: “The Eagle has landed; tell your children when.”

May the day come when it is nothing extraordinary to see someone who has walked on the moon.