It was the summer of ’69 and I was in high school in Port Huron, Mich., a small city north of Detroit where Lake Huron begins and Canada is within sight. I still have the front page of the Port Huron Times Herald ( where later I worked two summers) from that historic day. The yellowed, fragile page is in a trunk in my attic. My memories of the lunar landing are all in black and white because I watched it on a small black and white set and there was no color in newspapers back then. It was an exciting and hopeful moment in the country, a time that even a teen with boyfriends and beaches on her mind could appreciate. Many of us have clear memories of that historic day 40 years ago, and for our cover story this weekend we talked with a number of notable Americans about theirs, including Neil Armstrong, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John McCain and Sally Ride. Now’s your turn: Tell us in the comments section below where you were when man first walked on the moon.
Moon Landing Memories is a great site to post your memories and upload photos: http://moonlanding.historybeat.com
Also read archive coverage from “Today” newspaper, which provided tons of coverage of the entire space program, including Apollo 11.
It was the day I was born! I was born at 9:03am and my twin brother was born at 9:18! My great grandmother called us her moon babies. My mom tells us that the TV picture was fuzzy and she thought it was the anesthesia. My dad told her it really was the TV!
I was in Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry division. My company was in the field outside of LZ Grant. There had been lots of fights around and on Grant since January. We were digging in for the night when somebody heard we landed on the moon from an Armed Forces radio broadcast. I remember thinking, we are on the moon and I’m digging in, like US soldiers had been doing for 200 years since the revolution, yikes! Lord, get my out of here.
I was with my husband who was stationed at an Air Force base in the Azores, Portugal. It was a very backward island of people that could not fathom the idea of being on the moon. They were all very adament that it was just American propoganda.
I was attending the 1969 National Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho, they had a tent where we could watch the moon walk. It was one of those great moments in history where the world watched America make history! It was a very proud moment in time to be an American!!
I was at sea on the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier off the coast of Viet Nam.
I was only 6 years old when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, so I don’t know much.
I was doing graduate work at a marine lab at Beaufort, NC, the summer of 1969. I well remember watching the whole exciting episode in the lounge of the girls’ dorm – the only place with a color TV and enough room to accommodate most of the students on the island. It took hours for the whole dramma to unfold and in the wee hours when Neil Armstrong finally stepped onto the moon’s surface, some of those present were so drunk they likely never remembered his famous words or the history making moon walk.
I was playing outside in our front yard and my mother called me inside and told me that a historic event was about to happen. My mom, brother and I looked intently at our black and white TV at the NASA team at work. It was Austin, Texas and I was 12 years old. Little did I know 12 years later, I would become a part of NASA team and support the first Space Shuttle launch. And to this day, I still work for NASA and am inspired with every launch we have.
I was at the Kaneohe Yacht Club after having taken part in the Transpac Yacht race. The club had television sets setup in a tent so all the memvers and guests could view the landing.
The night of July 20, 1969, found my wife and me in a crowded, noisy pub in Heidelberg, Germany – the only Americans in the room. A local cried out, “Any Americans here?” We proudly raised our hands and were cheered, congratulated, and given free beer.
The next day, after buying souvenir newspapers, we drove to the border to cross into East Germany on our way to Berlin, unaware that we were not to bring West German newspapers into Communist East Germany. The guards found them and immediately confiscated them. We then had to wait for over an hour as every border guard read about the moon landing, a censored news item for them. When all had finished, the head border guard, smiling, returned our papers and waved us through.
We’ll never forget that day when the cold war ended for one hour.
This was a momentous day on many levels. It was my 43rd birthday and the day man looked to the stars and took the first steps in that direction. I was on Chaplain Duty at a Boy Scout Camp – Camp Dittmar – in Phelps, NY. We (my wife and I) had taken our television set with us to hook up and watch in case this historic moment took place. All of the actions at the camp (handicrafts, ropes courses, swimming, boating, etc.) stopped while we all shared the wonder of space. I had been an Episcopal priest since 1957 and am now retired and living in Medina, NY.
I was taking a college course in psychology at Queensborough Community College in Bayside, New York , during this summer to make it easier for my next semester at a state unversity of NY school. I was 18. My parents and grandparents on my mom’s side were in Israel. I was home taking care of our German shepherd. I remember that our professor in the pysch class dismissed us early that day so we could go home and watch the men walk on the moon.
I was 14 years old and had just graduated from eighth grade. My family had taken a vacation trip to Florida and of course we visited Cape Kennedy, as it was known at the time. We returned from our trip just in time to see the first moon walk, we even took photographs right from the television screen. I still have those pictures in an old photo album. Four years lated I had graduated from high school and enlisted in the Navy. My first day of basic training was July 20, 1973 in Orlando, Florida. I guess I was influenced by that historic moment more than I realized. Of course women weren’t even onboard ships then, much less thinking about being astronauts.
i was 10, and was with my friend Vicky sitting on her sofa, when her mom said to us,’remember this day you will here about it in the future’ so we sat and watched ,thanks to MRS.MONACO she was right!
i was having a baby boy on that day in princeton mo. he was born the day they left for the moon and the day they came back, we went home too. i felt like i had been to the moon. ha the hospital gave me a bank that had apollo11 on it and the date as a collector.
I was actually at the Space and Rocket Museum at Huntsville, Alabama when they landed on the moon, where the rocket was developed and built that carried them there. To be exact, me and my 10 year old son (now 50) were in the men’s room when it came over the speakers. We had spent the night at the Holiday Inn in Decatur, Alabama and listened to it on the car radio while driving to the Space Museum in Huntsville. Later that night we watched on TV as Neil Armstrong steped off the lunar lander onto the surface of the moon. What a thrill that was.
We had just moved to Bogota, Colombia. We were living in a temporary apartment until our house would be available. My husband came home from work carrying a TV he had borrowed from the communication office. The next thing I knew we had 15 or so of his Colombian co-workers gathered around the TV to watch this unbelievable event. The fact that Neil Armstrong was from our home state of Ohio, made us “over the top” proud.
I was in Vietnam. I didn’t even know that anyone walked on the moon! I didn’t find out until I returned to the United States.
I was 19 years old and living at the time with my grandmother in Howard Beach, NY. As I have been a science-fiction fan since my early teens, I was very excited as I sat with Grandma watching this amazing event. We were watching some of my stories come to life! We watched in awe as Neil Armstrong took his famous steps, then Grandma said softly, “My father had the first car in our town and I was so proud that we owned it! I never dreamed that I would ever see such a day as this.” I was happy to share this with her but also sad because I was apart from my fiance, Joe (now my beloved husband of 35 years), who was stationed in Vietnam. I wished that he could have been with us, too. I felt so proud of my country then, that we could do anything.
I just turned 11 in June and remember that it was shown live in TV but well past my bed time. My parents woke me up to watch this historic event. I still remember laying on the couch watching history being made.
I was in high school at the time and on summer vacation with my family. My father really loved the space program and it rubbed off on me. My family of six was in a small travel trailer in Myrtle Beach when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. My dad had brought along a very bulky black and white TV with rabbit ears that were covered with foil and placed as high in a tree as possible. I remember many other campers circling our site to catch a glimpse of that first step. We were taking the bus tour at Kennedy Space Center when the capsule of Apollo 11 splashed down. Our bus driver announced it over the intercom.
Fast forward 25 years to the summer of 1994. Our local newspaper, the Valley Dispatch, asked the same question as the Space Foundation is asking now. I replied with the same story. They came to my home to take a picture of me in my flight suit from Space Camp. They printed a lovely picture in color (considering I was the subject) and a very nice article. I went to Space Camp in Krasnoyarsk, Russia that same August with Dr. John Pottenger who was part of Space Camp in Huntsville. I showed him the article and he asked me to show it to a Professor Genady from the Moscow Aviation Institute. The professor was impressed with the article–especially with the color picture as that was too expensive in Russia at the time to include in newspapers. He had me autograph and date the article for him and informed me it would go to the Moscow Aviation Institute. I’m not sure if it did or not.
There were 16 of us in the group and three of us had August birthdays. At our final farewell bonfire, they celebrated our birthdays with unusual cakes, bouquets of gladiolus, and a special gift for each of us. Mine was a pin of Yuri Gargarin as the professor thought I smiled like Yuri as well as an article in the Krasnoyarsk newspaper about the professor. He had traveled 3 hours away to have this done. Since he had me autograph and date the original article from my newspaper for him, he likewise autographed and dated my article from him. Needless to say, I laminated the entire newspaper (I speak no Russian so I have no idea what it says.) and it is a prized possession of mine to this day.
Thanks for listening to my long winded story.
I was in the Joint Sessions of Congress when President Kennedy announced we would go to the moon, and then in Mission Control when we landed. The company I worked for, Aerojet, made the engines that placed the astronauts in orbit around the moon and then fired again to bring the home. If the engines did not work, they stayed up there forever. We were very tense. I recall walking through the press room and listening to descriptions going all around the world and thinking what a great day for America.
I was a contractor for NASA Headquarters and was in a small windowless office in Washington DC. I had an air/ground communication audio channel for all the Houston-Spacecraft communications and TV to watch one of the commercial TV channels. I was very upset about the poor quality of the TV from the moon but since it was not related to crew safety and was of no value for a safe return there was nothing that I could do about it. The crews job was to be sure that they could return to earth and time was very limited.
I knew the source of the noise during the “That is one step …” and knew it was at the ground station and that it could have been avoided.
Months latter I talked to the man in Australia who updated Houston on the TV reception.
My family was watching it on a black and white TV in our livingroom in Bellevue, Wa. My husband’s sister and her family were expected that day to vacation with us. Just as the program started his relatives came rushing thru the front door and ploped down on the carpet in front of the
TV. There were 7 of them and 6 of us all over the room. They had been driving over the speed limit to get to our house in time to see the landing and they made it! They hadn’t been pulled over and we figured all the police had been listening or watching to the same thing we all were!
I watched with my Dad, as Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon. Dad was born in 1902 when the Wright Brothers first flew. He went to high school in Detroit with Charles Lindbergh. Then he watched men walk on the moon. He died two months later.
It was my first summer as a waterfront counselor at Camp Tosebo, on Portage Lake outside Manistee, Michigan (See camptosebo.com for an update on the camp). All five of my brothers and I were campers, counselors, or both at the camp in the late 50′s and throughout the 60′s. The only TV was in the Welcome House, where the camp owners lived. They moved it over to the Clubhouse that day and 50 or so boys, and the two dozen counselors and staff, gathered around the set to watch the grainy black and white pictures. I don’t remember much about how we all reacted to the momentous event – but everyone knew it was important because none of us had had the privilege of watching anything on TV for over a month.
I was 12 years old and with my family, on vacation from St. Joseph Michigan, at Cape Canaveral to watch the launch of Appolo 11 from a camp ground which was the closest spot you could get to watch the launch. My new born baby brother was with us and he was only 6 weeks old. He was filmed by a tv news crew as the youngest visitor to watch the epic launch. It was an amazing spectacle of people and media.
I was on a military charter flight over the Azores on the way with my family from the USA to my new assignment as communications center commander at Sector Operations Center 3 in Borfink Bunker just a short distance from Birkenfeld, West Germany. We were advised by the flight crew of the landing and this was a source of pride for all of us on the aircraft and we couldn’t wait till we arrived in Frankfurt to be able to view TV pictures of that historical landing.
I was serving on the staff at the 1969 National Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. We did not have TV’s there, but at the main headquarters there was a huge tent with a lot of Scouts/Scouters inside watching TV. I went in to see what they were watching and saw an Eagle Scout, Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon.
My 92 year old grandfather wanted to get up from bed to watch the Moon Walk with my parents and me. We all watched in awe. My grandfather, with tears in his eyes said “I remember the headlines when Orville and Wilber Wright first flew a plane. I can’t believe I’m sitting here in my living room looking at box watching Americans actually walking on the moon.”
I was on board the recovery carrier USS Hornet waiting in the South Pacific for the return of the Apollo 11 crew. The ship had no tv downlink so we did not see the landing, that first step, etc. But on July 24th my three TV colleagues, Ron Nesson, Dallas Townsend and Keith McBee told and showed the world their return..some 10 to 11 miles in front of the ship. I was on world-wide radio doing a solo broadcast telling the same story. The president was aboard with us that morning as was Admiral John McCain, CINCPAC, Commander-In-Chief, Pacific…grandpa to Senator John McCain, then a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton. This July 24th we’ll back on the Hornet, a floating museum in Alameda, CA to celebrate the 40th anniversary…joined by, among others, Buzz Aldrin along with his new book. Don Blair, NBC RAdio Network, ret.
As a family we were at a Philadelphia Phillie’s baseball game. When the landing on the moon occurred, the game stopped and we witnessed the entire event. The thing that was so outstanding was that you could hear a pin drop among the thousands of fans besides the actual event.I don’t even remember who we were playing OR if we won or lost. (I am now 80.)
It was my birthday 7/20/69, I was 30 years old, I was in a restaurant called the Separate Tables, in NYC, watching Apollo 11 land on the moon. It was so exciting and still is every year on July 20th., knowing that on my birthday this great event took place. Yes, it was “The Day the Earth stood still”. God Bless America.
I was 14 and watched it on TV. The thing I remember most about that day is, that it was the last day we heard our brothers’ voice. He was leaving for Vietnam from California and little did we know that on August 12 he would be killed. So our whole family well always remember the date of the moon walk.
i was 13 and at a slumber party. we watched with awe and wonder as neil armstrong first stepped on the moon and bounced along the surface. when the astronauts came back they walked through an enclosed walkway and were kept quarantined in airstream trailers. i think nasa thought that they might have come back with some kind of parasite. the whole event was exciting. but then there were more moon landings and i think people took it for granted. when the shuttle era started it was fascinating. my family went to white sands here in nm when the weather was bad in florida. it was windy and the gypsum sand was blowing but we were there…
In Alexandria, Egypt, and , I was working with my father during the summer as a stage hand, in an open theater. Almost unanimously, every one was keeping an ear on the radio, even during the show. When the broadcaster annonced the landing of the first man on the moon, a great hush befallen the theater, and its audiance.e landing,
In Alexandria, Egypt, and , I was working with my father during the summer as a stage hand, in an open theater. Almost unanimously, every one was keeping an ear on the radio, even during the show. When the broadcaster annonced the landing of the first man on the moon, a great hush befallen the theater, and its audiance.e landing,
My husband was in the Navy and we were stationed in Winter Harbor, ME. The neighbors had a party to watch the moon landing. We stayed for awhile but went home before the moonwalk to be with our 2mo. old daughter. When Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon we took her outside to show her the moon and that there was actually an American man walking on it at that moment. That memory still brings tears to my eyes.
I watched the landing on a black-and-white TV with a fellow oceanography graduate student at the University of Rhode Island. As a summer employee at Grumman Aircraft, I had worked on the Lunar Module; so had my father as a full-time Grumman employee. Thousands of ordinary people across America contributed to making that “one step” happen. There was a tremendous sense of pride not just that Armstrong could do it, but that WE could do it.
I was 15 yrs old, working at the local A&W drive-in. I remember staring out the window at the moon, in complete disbelief and awe that someone could be so far away, touching that bright white disc in the night sky!
I was on vacation in Miami Beach Florida with my parents at the Algiers Hotel. My Friend Bruce Roberts and I watched the Moon Landing on a small TV in the lobby of the Hotel. I was 15 years old.
It was awesome. I will never forget it!!
I was 20 years old when my mother and I watched the Moon landing together. My father had gone to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch. Both of us became silent as we watched in awe, fully aware of the significance of the moment. As the image faded, my mother turned to me, puzzled and asked with total sincerity,”What confuses me is that if the moon is round, how did they find a flat place to land?” She never lived it down…..
Linda and I were in the Fiji Islands serving as Peace Corps volunters. No television to watch, just the news from the BBC. On the day the Apollo spacecraft came home, we arose around three a.m., Fijian time, and watched the astronauts blaze across the sky for their splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. One exciting moment!
Later that year, several of us obtained a film of the Apollo 11 mission from the U.S. Consulate in Suva and, with the help of a generator, showed the film in a Fijian village.
I was the executive officer on a Coast Guard cutter in the Bearing Sea on an Alaskan fisheries patrol. It was my birthday and I was about to conduct a courtesy boarding of a Russian factory vessel, as part of the new detente era of Russian-American relations, to ensure compliance with treaty provisions. Communications were often difficult in the Bearing Sea and we had not yet heard of the landing. Clearly the Russian fleet had better communications gear than we did. When I stepped aboard the Russian vessel, their ships captain came forward and vigorously shook my hand saying in perfect English, “Congratulations, America has safely landed their man on the moon”
I was five years old and my family and I were vacationing on the coast of Washington State, staying in a cottage with a black-and-white RCA TV. My Dad, an aeronautical engineer at Boeing, called the family into the living room to watch the moon landing. I thought it was way cool, and I remember looking at my Dad. and seeing him get teary eyed. I will never forget the emotion on that day–pride, wonder, and a real sense of patriotism and accomplishment
I was in Houston with my wife and four small children visiting my Wife’s brother. Houston was th place to be since it was the home of the space center so the TV coverage was great. We watched on a 19 inch black and white set as Neil Armstrong decended the ladder an touched down on the Lunar surface. I was a thrill for myself, my wife and children. Several days later we watched again when the capsule came into view under a canopy of parachutes and splashed down in the Pacific.
I was almost 11 years old, going into sixth grade in Simi Valley, California. Our family had just returned from a month-long, cross country vacation to visit our grandparents and relatives in New York and Massachusetts. I insisted my Mom wake me up early (4 a.m.!) on launch day to watch CBS News’ coverage “as it happened,” since it wouldn’t be the same witnessing history on replays.
For the next nine days, my world stopped as there was no interest whatsoever in going outside to play baseball, or do any of the normal summertime activities kids of my generation were likely to do. In the days before the internet and 24/7 cable news coverage, “Uncle” Walter Cronkite and former astronaut Wally Schirra (along with John Chancellor and Roy Neal on NBC, Jules Bergman, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith on ABC and the local L.A. station coverage) were my guides to the momentous occasion.
When “Eagle” safely touched down at Tranquility Base on July 20 — my grandmother’s birthday — I informed my Mom who was in the kitchen washing the dishes. Later that evening, my family gathered in our living room, mesmerized as we watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take their first steps for all mankind in black and white on our 19-inch RCA color TV/stereo console. Dad would step outside to look up at the moon with his binoculars.
Three years later, he would introduce me to Col. Aldrin at the Edwards AFB Officer’s Club, who had become a family friend, and later a mentor and colleague in space advocacy efforts to this very day.
I was on a study trip at the University of Salamanca in Spain. About 40 of us had all gathered in the girls’ dorm because it had a TV. Spanish TV came on at noon, 2 hours earlier than normal to give an overview of the whole US space program. The broadcast was of course in Spanish but we knew what they were saying. We all did the countdown to the launch and cheered when the rocket took off. We had to watch the 1st walk on the moon on a delayed broadcast because the walk happened about 5 AM in Spain. It was particularly special because we were in a foreign country when it happened and to many of those we had met in Spain it was all new.
The Space Foundation is posting Apollo 11 recollections up until July 20. A common scenario is a group of people huddled around a black and white TV. A common theme is how Apollo inspired young people to become scientists and teachers. Access the Space Foundation postings at http://www.SpaceFoundation.org.