Remembering that

‘ONE SMALL STEP’

Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.

When asked to recall memories of the event, the following Watauga Democrat readers responded:

Pam Fisher: “My then-husband Tom and I were living in California in 1969 while he was stationed there in the Air Force.

“We stayed up until the early-morning hours of July 20 to watch the lunar landing and the Armstrong/Aldrin walk on the moon. Although all we had were small black and white television images, the event was extremely moving and we were very proud to be Americans.

“A little later we jumped in our car and drove onto a bridge from which we could see the huge full moon just overhead.

“We were so humbled and partially convinced, I think, that we could actually see Neil Armstrong and Buzz Adrin bounding over the surface while Mike Collins circled overhead.”

Bill Fisher (no relation to Pam): “In July of 1969, I was 11 years old, and already could tell you anything you wanted to know about the U.S. Space Program.

“I was bitten with the space bug from as early as I remember, watching the Gemini launches on TV with my parents.

“There was no one more excited than I in our small town in eastern NC. I had to explain to my brother (5 years younger than I) that no, we could not see the men on the moon by going outside. We could only watch them on TV.

“By the later missions, especially those last few in 1972, I was a freshman in high school, and everyone loved ‘current events’ day in science class when there was a mission coming up or in progress, because I would take my 5 foot tall Saturn V rocket model to school and I could consume the entire hour and no one else would have to get up in class to do a report.”

David Gross: “I was a little boy of 7 and was aroused from a deep sleep by my dad, who wanted me to see the first manned lunar landing, we were in Terre Haute, Ind. at the time and Dad was teaching at Indiana State University and he and I watched the Eagle land, and then a little while later, Neil Armstrong was heard on the radio, announcing to Houston, ‘Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed’ and then you could hear cheering and screaming from Houston Mission Control. He then got into his space suit and climbed down the ladder on the side of Eagle, and jumped down on the lunar surface and uttered those immortal words, ‘One small step for [a] man, One giant leap for mankind.’”

‘[a] man’ or ‘man?’
Upon stepping unto the surface of the moon, Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong was supposed to say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Inadvertently, Armstrong forgot to enunciate “a,” resulting in a contradictory statement.

Armstrong later said he “would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said —although it might actually have been.”

Armstrong preferred his famous quote be written with a bracketed “a” in the sentence.