(Click here to go to my Apollo 11 YouTube channel.)
I was 6-1/2 years old on that evening in October 1957, when my parents, my sister, and I went out into our side yard and looked up to view the USSR’s Sputnik I shooting across the night sky. The “Space Race” was on!
Growing up in that era was amazing. Americans crowded around the nearest TV set to watch every manned launch, from Mercury through Gemini through Apollo.
Alan Shepard’s brief suborbital flight in May 1961, making him the first American into space? I watched it with school friends (I was in 4th grade) on the covered walkway of Spring Valley Elementary School in Richardson, TX, on a TV set placed there for us to watch on our way into school that morning.
John Glenn’s three-orbit flight in February 1962, making him the first American to orbit the Earth? Launch was early that morning, so again I watched the entire 5-hour-or-so mission as the entire school gathered in the cafeteria. How much we saw on that little black-and-white TV screen, set up on the stage, I have no idea. But it was all about being a part of history.
Our TV set at home was a black-and-white Westinghouse console we had inherited when Daddy’s father had passed away in 1955 – yes, we didn’t have a TV until I was 4 years old. So deprived!
I remember my excitement at seeing my first launch in color; it was one of the Gemini missions, in 1965, I think. We had moved to Kansas City, MO, in 1962, but I visited my sister & brother-in-law in Dallas for a week or so every summer. Palmer was in seminary at Southwestern in Fort Worth, and working to pay his way through school. At that time, he happened to be working in an appliance store, so he took me down to the store with him that day, and I got to watch the launch on one of the color TV sets there.
Space exploration was still new and fresh and thrilling, and anyone growing up in the ’60s followed those space missions with rapt excitement. But perhaps I was a little bigger “space nut” than most.
When I graduated from Oak Park High School (North Kansas City, MO, School District) in June 1969, Mother and Daddy gave me a reel-to-reel tape recorder as a graduation present. To this day, it has to be one of the best – and most lasting – presents I’ve ever received. Fifty years later, it still works!
Well, the following month, as the Apollo 11 launch approached, I decided to put that tape recorder to work. Beginning with the press conference of the three astronauts on the evening of July 14, two nights before the launch, I recorded the audio of any TV coverage I considered most critical and interesting. After all was said and done, I edited the recordings into a little over 15 hours spread over five tapes. My editing included my own narration introducing the project and introducing various events, identifying the commentators, etc., on the event, and so forth. Recordings also often included the voices of our household discussing the events as they unfolded (though they’re usually pretty garbled on the tape). Our household that summer included not only Mother & Daddy and me, but Billy Vandiver, a college student assigned to work with Daddy that summer as a student missionary.
A few years ago, I transferred the tapes to CDs (it took 13 CDs to record the material from 5 tape reels). Last week, I began uploading everything to YouTube, inserting relevant pictures to match the audio. This is a time-consuming process, so it will take a few more weeks for me to have everything posted to YouTube. So far, I’ve posted the first four “events.”
Click here to go to my Apollo 11 YouTube channel.
When the project is completely uploaded to YouTube, it will include the following:
- 7/14/1969
- Event 1 – My introduction of project and astronauts’ press conference (02:25)
- Event 2 – Press conference of three astronauts, less than 40 hours before launch (28:56) [includes comments by NBC’s Frank McGee]
- 7/15/1969
- Event 3 – Special, “Man on the Moon: the epic journey of Apollo 11,” aired on eve of launch (53:56) [CBS, anchored by Walter Cronkite]
- 7/16/1969
- Event 4 – Launch coverage (01:09:04) [mostly NBC (Hugh Downs of TODAY, followed by Frank McGee), with some CBS (Walter Cronkite & Wally Schirra) and ABC (Frank Reynolds)]
- Event 5 – Leaving Earth orbit (19:32)
- Event 6 – Pulling Lunar Module (LM) from third stage (00:27)
- Event 7 – Progress report (00:35) [NBC]
- Event 8 – Transmission of pictures (02:43) [CBS]
- 7/17/1969
- Event 9 – Transmission of pictures (39:09) [CBS]
- 7/18/1969
- Event 10 – Transmission of pictures (02:50)
- Event 11 – Progress report (00:58) [NBC]
- Event 12 – Comments by Jack Cafferty (00:22) [WDAF, NBC affiliate in KC, MO]
- 7/19/1969
- Event 13 – Lunar-orbit insertion (48:56) [NBC]
- Event 14 – Transmission of pictures (14:40) [CBS]
- 7/20/1969
- Event 15 – Separation of Eagle from Columbia (20:47) [NBC]
- Event 16 – Lunar Landing (35:43) [NBC]
- Event 17 – Coverage between landing and opening of hatch (01:20:18)
- Event 18 – Coverage between opening of hatch and first step on Moon (17:29)
- 7/20-21/1969
- Event 19 – Entire MOON WALK (2:14:40) (NBC)
- 7/21/1969
- Event 20 – Coverage from end of MOON WALK ’til 3 a.m. (50:35) [NBC]
- Event 21 – Ed McMahon & Johnny Carson of Tonight Show discuss launch experience as spectators (09:27) [NBC]
- Event 22 – Leaving lunar orbit (31:27) (CBS)
- 7/22/1969
- Event 23 – Transmission of pictures (28:02) (CBS)
- 7/23/1969
- Event 24 – Transmission of pictures (02:02) [WDAF, NBC affiliate in KC, MO]
- Event 25 – Comments by John Rayburn & Jack Remington (01:22) [WDAF, NBC affiliate in KC, MO]
- 7/24/1969
- Event 26 – Coverage preceding confirmation of splashdown (01:12:28) [NBC]
- Event 27 – Splashdown and recovery (01:16:52) [NBC]
- Event 28 – Astronauts’ conversation with President Nixon and Frank Borman (10:49) [NBC]
- Event 29 – Coverage immediately following conversation with President Nixon (16:53) [NBC]
- Event 30 – Wrap-up of mission (21:25) [NBC]
- Event 31 – Wrap-up of mission (23:10) [CBS]
- Event 32 – Johnny Carson interviews Frank McGee on Tonight Show (15:07) (NBC)
- Event 33 – Highlights of mission (07:36)
- 5/25/1961
- Event 34 – Declaration by President John F. Kennedy of goal to reach Moon by end of decade
My one disappointment or regret as I look through these “events” listed on my tape boxes is that I apparently failed to record the lift-off from the Moon on Monday, July 21, 1969. I don’t remember how or why I missed that. I vaguely remember watching the coverage of it and have no idea how I failed to record it.
Watc;hing the progress of the space program was an adventure for all Americans, perhaps especially for those of us who were coming of age during the 1960s. It was a chaotic and troubling decade – Vietnam, cities burning over the fight for Civil Rights, assassination of one major leader after another (Medgar Evers, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK).
The Space Race, of course, was not without its tragedy. The USSR suffered several losses, including the death of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. On a Friday evening in January 1967, I was sitting in front of our TV when a news bulletin came on the screen, announcing that three astronauts had died in a fire on the launch pad.
But the Space Race was, for the US, mostly a story of the triumph of the human spirit, of human ingenuity and cooperation in the cause of a grand enterprise. It was an inspiration to those of us who were growing up at that time, something to rejoice about as we grappled with the tragedies and struggles of that remarkable decade.
I’ll never forget the feeling that Sunday evening, July 20, 1969 – 50 years ago tonight – as Mother, Daddy, Billy, and I watched Neil Armstrong take that first step. Then Daddy and I went out into the backyard, set up my telescope
, and viewed the Moon through the lens of that telescope (which I still have today – see photo). One of us – I don’t remember which – said to the other, with amazement bordering on disbelief, “We (America) have men walking around up there right now!”
The word “awesome” is tossed around pretty lightly today, but we were truly in awe that evening. . . . of a Creator who could not only create a universe so vast but could create beings with minds so powerful as to enable them to traverse that universe.
Awesome!