From South Texas To The Moon

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The moon.  

Shakespeare wrote about it.  He penned the following for Juliet to say in her balcony scene with Romeo.    When the young lad attempts to promise love’s allegiance to her by swearing by the moon, Juliet chides him:

Swear not by the moon!  The inconstant moon?  That monthly changes in her circled orb?  Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Here, Juliet accuses the moon of being “fickle” because it changes shape all the time.  ‘Twas not the case, as we now know.    The moon’s inconstant shape  exists ONLY because of the Earth’s inconstant shadow, courtesy of the sun.

There have been jokes about the wonders of the light and dark comparisons of night and day.   Here in Texas, the Aggies of Texas A&M University are the butt of many jokes.    One states that the school’s Engineering and Astronomy Departments joined forces to  build a spacecraft themselves and will blast off with the hopes of reaching the moon, but in order to beat the blazing heat from the sun, they plan on launching at night.

I’ve looked at the moon many times in my life and many times since  July 20, 1969.     I was ten years old that day;  that incredibly auspicious day.   It was summer and in the small South Texas berg where I had been born and raised, mothers were making their kids do the exact same thing my mother did.  She made me stay in that summer night.   Usually my mother was concerned about my incessant TV habits in the evening, but this time she was encouraging my viewing.   For that night, history would be made:   Neil Armstrong was going to be the first man in history to walk on the lunar surface.

Yes, it was exciting.   This was indeed a first.  But I was well aware of science fact.   Oh sure,  I’d seen the 50′s era, schlocky science fiction movies about landing the moon; the scary, evil aliens who lived there and the green cheese surface on which they dwelled.    But my reasoned and contemporary view of space exploration (even my sophomoric view) still difference from that of my parents.  My mother and father  both in their early 40′s on that date,  were in sheer awe of what TV images the night would bring.   But unlike my parents, I completely believed it was possible that a man walk on the moon.    A lunar landing was hardly improbable.  

I was raised smack dab in the middle of the space race.   The Russian’s had Sputnik and Yuri Gregorian; the United States had John Glenn and the Mercury,  Gemini and Apollo programs.    I knew as much about NASA as I did the characters on ”Jonny Quest” and “George of The Jungle”, my favorite Saturday morning cartoons.      My life had been unduly influenced by NASA and the space program.    Why, that very morning after I woke up,  breafasted on bacon, eggs and a cold glass of Tang.

Four days earlier on July 16th, a Saturn 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Kennedy, with three men perched inside it’s nose cone.     But tonight, an ordinatory space mission, would become extraordinary.  

 We watched TV  as a family that night, gathered around the hearth-like hutch which contained a 20-inch Zenith color TV.   Daddy turned off the lights in  our maple panelled den to further the effect.   I remember my mother admonishing him because  he’d switch channels from Walter Cronkite on CBS to Jules Bergman, Science Editor for ABC News, hoping to get the best picture possible. 

The landing of the Lunar Module or LM  also known as the Eagle, though  NASA afffectionately called it the LEM,  was a slow painstaking process,  but considering the historical nature of the even, even the most impatient man garnered every ounce of forebearance he could. 

At about 4pm Texas time, we heard those magic words transmitted over a squeaky microphone uttered from 98-thousand miles away.    

 ”Houston, Tranquility Base here.  The Eagle has landed.”

Houston was the very first word uttered from the moon.   Take that, Dallas!!!!!!!

And that word and those that followed,  ushered in a new era of space exploration.   I remember my father saying, “Mars is next!” as he toasted the grainy TV image with a Scotch and water. 

Then, the two astronauts inside the LEM, prepared to make history again by walking on the moon.   I can’t imagine what Niel Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin must have felt when the looked out the craft’s tiny windown.   Michael Collins, was forced to stay in the command module or Columbia as NASA referred to it.   He would orbit the moon a few times while his astro-collegues walked on the moon.      

Shortly after the LEM landed, Buzz Aldren grabbed the mike and said this:

Shortly after landing, before preparations began for the EVA (extra hvehicular activity), Aldrin broadcast the following:

This is the LEM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

He then preformed Holy Communion privately.   This was never made public and with good reason.  At the time, noted Atheist,  Madalyn Murray O’Hare  had brought a  lawsuit brought had filed suit against NASA because  the crew of Apolla 8 read from the Book of Genesis.  Asa result, NASA demanded that their astronauts refrain from any kind of religious activities while in space.  Aldrin told no one about his plan for Communion–he didn’t even mention it to his wife and it was years before his actions were made public.   Aldrin was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster (the Houston suburb which serves as home to the Johnson Space Center).  His communion kit was prepared by his church’s pastor, the Rev. Dean Woodruff.     In fact, the  Webster Presbyterian Churc still has the chalice Aldrin used on the moon, and commemorates the special Lunar Communion each year on the Sunday closest to July 20th.

There was a five hour time lapse between the LEM’s landing the moon walk.   The plan was for the astronauts to sleep.   As you can imagine, that was the last thing on their minds and instead, they elected to prep for the moon walk. 

And shortly before 1o pm (CST), Armstrong began his very long descent down a very short ladder.    He had some trouble getting his life-support system held in that huge pack on his back, but managed to squeeze through.   Onced situated atop the ladder, he tugged at a D-Ring beside the ladder and  out popped a stowed TV camera attached to one of the LEM’s tripodic legs.  

Everything he did from that point on was televised.

Then, Buzz Aldrin exited the craft and became the second man to walk  on the moon’s surface.   He and Armstrong  planted a flag and  attached a plaque to it  which read,  “”Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”   Then, the pair frollicked in the moon’s gravity…1/6 that of the Earth’s.  They also collected some lunar soil samples and picked up a few rocks.    

Afterwards, they climbed up the ladder and back into the LEM and prepared to jettison off the moon’s surface to rendezvous with the Command Module  orbiting overhead. 

 Next stop:   Earth.

I don’t remember much after Armstrong and Aldrin re-entered the LEM.  I do remember the three astronauts were quarantined for health reasons aboard a Naval war ship which helped retrieve them after splash down.   

But do I remember almost everything that happened the night the Eagle landed.      Shortly after Aldrin closed the hatch that night, I walked outside to join my father.  He was in the backyard staring up at the moon.     He didn’t say anything;  he just put his arm around me and continued his upward gaze.   I looked up, too.  

I wondered if the two Men On the Moon were looking back at me.   I had the urge to wave, but didn’t when I remembered that earlier, Walter Cronkite had informed us that we were watching the lunar events unfold along with more than 600-million people around the globe.  In the vast configuration of things, I felt very small in a vast sea of humanity that I would never  fully comprehend.   That night, the Earth suddenly felt so huge and the moon seemed so very,very tiny.

And then another rare event happened that night;  the child in me took over and  logic left.   And out in the darkness of my backyard, under my father’s gentle caress,  I no longer looked at the moon as a orbiting satellite of discovery and exploration.   It had reverted back to being simply the moon;  the greyish, white round thing up in the night sky;  the very thing that a nursery rhyme insisted a cow had  jumped over.   

And the Man In It smiled at me just as he always  had, but on the evening of July 20, 1969,  he seemed a bit happier.    

I instinctively knew it was because he had company over for the very first time.

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Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

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Ninety-two years.    That’s a tremendous lifespan for anyone, but it’s especially long for a journalist.   My people aren’t known for their healthy lifestyles.

Walter was born in Missouri, but his family moved to Houston where he was raised.  He had the good sense to attend the University of Texas where he persued a Journalism degree and worked for a small Austin radio station as a sports anchor.   He was fired by a boss who told him he’d never make it in the biz.    So very often, this declarative  from station managers has preceded some of the most successful careers.

And Cronkite’s career exemplified success.

Upon news of Cronkite’s death Friday night, I was asked if he had any influence on my decision to venture into the crazy world of broadcasting.   I didn’t know the answer to that question, but later realized there was no way he could not have influenced me.

I was raised with Walter Cronkite.  I learned about the latest anti-war protests on some college campus.    I learned about the number of B-52′s that were downed in Vietnam that day; he told me about the latest firefight over some jungle hilltop and I knew the number of body bags that would soon be returning to the States.

My earliest memory of Walter Cronkite was at four years of age.   Few believe  I can remember anything about the Kennedy assination on November 22, 1963  but I’ve recited  certain facts of the day that my mother verifies.   Cronkite is part of that memory.   My mother was rocking me after lunch in an attempt to get me to take my nap and she was doing so while watching her favorite soap opera, “As The World Turns”.   I remember the screen went black and suddenly Cronkite’s voice  broke the silence and announced that JKF had been shot while riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas.    A few minutes later, he came back on to announce that Kennedy had died.  My mother, then a card carrying Democrat, started to cry and a few minutes later, so did Cronkite.

He did something that no network anchor had done before:  he showed his emotions.

He didn’t sob; he didn’t wail, there was no gnashing of teeth.  It was brief and polite and all things considered, it was appropriate.  Nevertheless,  I think it stunned some people.     America was used to seeing their stoic, stone-faced network news anchors in overtly humanistic roles.    

But Cronkite changed that.

And the man didn’t hide his boyish enthusiasm when Neil Armstrong landed the lunar module on the surface of the moon.      I was ten on July 20, 1969.   I had been raised with the space program.  By that time, even landing on the moon bore a degree of  mundanity  for me, but  for my parents, their contemporaries and Cronkite who were raised in a world of limitations,  improbabilities and Flash Gordon, landing on the moon and the journey it took to get there, was colossal.

 

While my TV relationship  with Walter Cronkite started waning in the mid 70′s,  my appreciation for his style, his efforts and his professionalism never ceased.   As network news shows go, Huntley and Brinkley did it first, but Walter did it better.

He was called, ‘the most trusted man in America” and we believed it…perhaps for reasons we still don’t know.   You just had a sense with  daily ministrations of Cronkite’s baritone and often monotone delivery, you were getting nothing but the facts; the real story.   He would have never made the news he was reporting.

He would never have called President Bush (41) a wimp to his face;  he would never have launched a smear campaign against a sitting president (Bush 43) by publically maligning and bending reality regarding his military history.

Cronkite would never have done half the things that so many newscasters do today.

It’s odd, you know…odd when you reach a certain age and you start to look at things differently.   Life and death and the fine line which separates them while not foremost on your mind, becomes more of a concern.   I’ve been thinking about Cronkite’s life.   It spanned 92 years.  He saw war,  death and violence and he saw wrongs that were never made right.   He reported on good things too I suppose, but those so rarely ever get press.

I made it a point to watch Cronkite’s last newscast in 1983 and I remember doing so with a slight lump in my throat.   Not because I was some ardent fan and not because I was in Journalism school at the time and there because I had been duly inspired by his 19 year reign as America’s premier newsman.   I watched because goodbyes are often historic and this one was.    His departure also represented the end of an era and sadly, the beginning of a new one.

I firmly believe network news coverage changed after Cronkite left the anchor desk and it’s only gotten worse since news programming has become so ubiquitous in recent years.    News people are now TV stars more than anything else.  Beauty has replaced ability.    Ken dolls anchor while Barbie and a cadre of hair and make-up stylists are out in the field reporting on day ten of  Michael Jackson’s allegedly mottled penis and how it once owned a set of Ghandi’s gilded steak knives.

When Cronkite left, so did many if the good things about network news.  

Nuetrality died.

And sadly, that’s the way it is.

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