It was a hot July afternoon with a high temperature that day of 93 degrees. It was a Sunday, my only day off from my gig doing the Nightbeat Show on WCOS so I did not have to go back to the station until 7PM the next day. Even rarer was that Susan had the day off as well. So were both in the apartment on Trenholm Road for the big event. The date was July 20, 1969 and the event was the Apollo 11 Lunar landing and the first moonwalk in history.
Both of us were taking flying lessons out at Miller Aviation that summer and I was just a few weeks from earning my private pilots’ license. So there was a keen interest in what was going on 238,900 miles above our heads. The big RCA color console TV went on in time for the separation of the Lunar Lander named “Eagle” from the command module named “Columbia” with Michael Collins in orbit. The separation occurred at 2:12 EDT and we went back to our weekend chores because that was the only day we had to do them. But the sound on the TV was turned up in the living room so we could hear what was going on as the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) made its descent to the surface. There was some concern; as the descent began, Armstrong and Aldrin found that they were passing landmarks on the surface two or three seconds early, and reported that they were "long"; they would land miles west of their target point. Eagle was traveling too fast.
A picture of Neil Armstrong taken by Buzz Armstrong late in the moonwalk. Around 4 PM the temperature had dropped to 83 degrees and we finished our tasks and were back in place in front of the TV just in time to watch the last 20 minutes of the approach and landing. The fact that it was in black and white didn’t bother me, I was grateful just to be able to watch. With Buzz Aldrin doing the navigation, Neil Armstrong was at the controls. There were some computer “alarms” during the descent that added to the drama of the landing. We all held our collective breath as Armstrong saw that the computer's landing target was in a boulder-strewn area just north and east of a 300 foot diameter crater (later determined to be West crater), so he took semi-automatic control and spent precious fuel to fly over the rough spot on the surface. I remember some commentary about what would happen if they ran out of fuel before touchdown. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
Finally a collective exhale around the world as Buzz Aldren called out: "Contact light!" when one of the probes on the landing gear made contact with the moon’s surface. Armstrong was supposed to kill the engines at that time but in the excitement, he forgot and the module landed with the rocket still running. He immediately shut it down with no incident. Then came the words we will remember forever as Armstrong transmitted to the CAPCOM, Charles Duke, the words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Duke was not expecting the change in call signs so he muffed his reply as he expressed the relief at Mission Control: "Roger, Twan– Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
Around that time, it dawned on me that this was the first time in human history that all of human kind was able to watch on almost live TV as the frontier of mankind’s exploration occurred. I say “almost live” because it takes 1.3 seconds for a television signal to reach earth from the moon.
It was also one of the first times that the new instant medium of television was broadcasting something inspiring. We had become used to same day news coverage of the battlefields of Vietnam. We saw those horrific scenes from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 after Martin Luther King was shot. We saw the footage from the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the day after Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded. We had seen live coverage of the rioting in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention on August 26 - 29, 1968. It was beginning to feel like all the news we saw on TV was bad. That Sunday changed it all.
Because we didn’t have to work until late the next day we were prepared to stay up and watch the first lunar walk scheduled for 3:30 or so on Monday morning. Fortunately Armstrong and Aldrin were too “Buzzed” to relax (sorry Buzz, I just had to go there) the moonwalk was moved up and happened about five hours before its scheduled time on the flight plan. So at 10:39:33 PM the Eagle was depressurized and Armstrong, after having some difficulty exiting the LEM, began his descent down the ladder to the surface. During the descent, he could not see his feet.
600 million earthlings watched that final foot and a half long “jump” to the dusty floor of the Sea of Tranquility and we heard those incredible words “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong intended to say; “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” but the word “a” was masked by a short burst of static. You know, it doesn’t really matter – it works with or without the “a”.
We watched for the next two and a half hours as Armstrong and Aldrin cavorted across the lunar surface before hitting the sack in time to get some rest before having to rise and shine for the lunar liftoff at 1:54 PM EDT on Monday. Like Armstrong and Aldrin, sleep did not come easy.
So I was pretty groggy when I arrived at the Cornell Arms studios of WCOS the next day. I picked up the records, commercials, logs and news copy and headed out to the remote site on the parking lot of Doug Broome’s Drive In on Two Notch Road near Beltline. I thought that I would be getting a lot of requests for the number one song at the time; Zager and Evan’s – “In The Year 2525”. I was ready for that. What I did not expect was the number of requests for “Telstar” by the Ventures. It was a “Solid Gold” record by then and normally I would not have it with me. But thanks to his foresight, Mike Rast my news announcer had placed a copy of the 1962 original by the English band the Tornados next to the wire rack containing the Top 40 records. So despite a little sleep deprivation, it was a good night. Oh MY!
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