Apollo 11 Crew Landed on the Moon on My Birthday
This week marks the 57th anniversary of the first
moon landing by the crew of Apollo 11. That was a special day for me, as Neil
Armstrong took his “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” on my tenth birthday.
I no longer remember how we celebrated my tenth birthday. I
know we had a cake—my mom always baked an angel food cake for our birthdays,
and my brother and I got to choose what color to tint the fluffy frosting, and
how to decorate the central hole (I usually put a slender glass or small vase
into the cake’s center, and put a little bouquet of flowers in it). I have no
memory of what presents I received either.
But I do remember watching the moon landing. My mom was a
big fan of Walter Cronkite, so we watched CBS’s coverage. I don’t think we had
a color TV yet; in my memory, everything was black and white, and the photos
from the moon were pretty fuzzy. But I was excited. Even at ten, I understood I
was watching something amazing and world-changing.
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| Buzz Aldrin and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, July 1969 |
Later, perhaps at Christmas, I received a bulletin board for my
room that had a picture of the moon lander and the date stamped on the cork
backing. I used the bulletin board straight through my college years, although most
of the time I had so many papers and photos tacked up that the Apollo 11 lander
was invisible.
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| Photo of a bulletin board like mine from an online sale post |
The first time I visited NASA in Houston with my children, I
proudly showed them the displays on Apollo 11, pointing out my birthdate on the
signs. The event remains special to me, and I think about Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin every year on my birthday.
Sources:
Photo of Buzz Aldrin and Lunar Lander. Wikimedia Commons. https://images.nasa.gov/details/as11-40-5948
http://dayton.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/LARGE/GPN-2000-001102.jpg on the Wayback
Machine at the Wayback Machine
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001102.html on the Wayback Machine
at the Wayback Machine
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