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Seniors remember lunar landing
newsroom@observer-reporter.com
Mary Frances Cecil says her neighbors in Marianna were frightened four decades ago at the thought of what might happen when man first stepped foot on the moon.
"The people were so afraid of what would happen, that maybe the moon would go out of orbit," Cecil, 82, said Monday, on the 40th anniversary of the landing.
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Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their spacecraft on the surface of the moon while most of America watched grainy images from the moon on their televisions.
As the Eagle set down on Tranquility Base, four miles away from the planned landing site, it culminated a space race that had begun eight years before when President John F. Kennedy committed the nation to a successful moon landing.
"I thought it was exciting and science fiction became a reality," said Gene Narchus, 68, also of Bentleyville.
The landing took place on a Sunday afternoon. The Eagle touched ground at 4:17 p.m. About six hours later, Armstrong walked down the ladder, becoming the first human to step onto the moon's surface.
At the Washington Senior Citizen Center Monday, administrative assistant Sandy Grose remembered being busy with her three children that day. The television was downstairs in the family room, and she bent down to look past the stairs to get a peak of the broadcast.
"It was such a time. Who would have ever believed man would land on the moon?" she said.
For others, such as Mary Emma Porter, the landing was not as exciting as Alan Shepard's brief blast into space or John Glenn's earth orbit. Those early space flights had captured the nation's attention, leaving the moon landing almost secondary.
"By then, Apollo was old news," the Washington woman said.
Martha Beatty, also of Washington, was busy that evening in 1969. She recalled being in the kitchen with her four children calling to her to come and see the television.
She remembers buying the breakfast drink Tang for the children. Backed by a marketing campaign that astronauts drank it in space, many children wanted to try spooning the dry powder into glasses of water. Beatty only purchased it a couple of times. Her children later found they didn't care for the taste.
Not everyone believed going to the moon was the right thing to do. Betty Levers of Washington questions the cost of the space industry even today as people struggle financially and many are without health benefits.
Meanwhile, Shirley Kadash of Ellsworth counts herself among skeptics who believe the moon landing was faked.
"They say it wasn't real. It was staged," said Kadash, 71, while playing a hand of euchre at the Bentleyville center. "It makes you wonder."
Another card player, Gerry Gumbert of Daisytown, said she is a firm believer in the landing.
"I never thought they'd make it," said Gumbert, 92. "I thought it was unbelievable."
