So many of the "Where were you when..." events are tragedies. Today, we celebrate a good one.
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon 45 years ago today. I remember exactly where I was-- on the foot of my parents' bed, watching Walter Cronkite on a GE black and white portable television. It had a blue plastic case. I can still see it.
Consider the feat-- from Orville and Wilbur in 1903 to walking on the moon in less than 70 years. Wow!
It was a great time, a fascinating time to be a kid, a news good, a TV geek and a science aficionado. Every second of the Apollo 11 mission was dissected during endless television coverage. I was a member of a Cronkite family. You can see what all three networks did back then, courtesy of YouTube. Looking back, it was striking to see how big a cheerleader Cronkite was. Maybe it was too much. The other networks were solid, albeit a bit dry.
Even as a kid, I knew this was about more than science. There were fresh woulds from Vietnam, the Kennedy assassinations, civil rights, MLK, etc. We needed a "win." America needed something good. NASA and three astronauts provided it. The country was united again for one week in the summer of 1969.