Forty Years Ago Today
If you're the right age, do you remember watching men land and walk on the moon? Do you remember where you were? Was it the first time you watched a space trip?
Click to viewI like this video, because we lived out in the sticks and only got 2 channels, with iffy reception at best (remember aerials?), so the image we saw was especially blurry.
That Sunday night I was not quite 12, and since it was summer, and this was a Big Deal, I got to stay up and watch the whole thing on our black and white TV. I sat on the couch in the living room and hoped it would all work out and was so amazed and thrilled and Wow! that it did. I remember watching earlier lift offs and landings, and I remember the sadness when the three astronauts died in the fire in their capsule.
What most sticks in my mind from that era is the sense that human beings could do anything they sent their minds to and that certain causes were worth risks and sacrifices, even loss of lives. Some of that sense no doubt came from the voice of Walter Cronkite, whom I associated with the space program as much as with the "CBS Evening News." I'm saddened that he is not with us to celebrate this anniversary, but I am glad that BD and her classmates were able to have a similar experience when John Glenn went back into space on the Shuttle Discovery. One of her classmate's parents brought in a big screen TV and set it up in the gym, and almost every class watched the launch. If memory serves, Walter Cronkite was on the air for that occasion, or maybe I only wished he were.