Fifty-three years ago, my brothers and I were watching television with friends from church on Sunday evening. Our youth minister had planned this activity for us weeks before. My oldest brother was leaving that week for the Navy. This was his going away party.

Saturday, we had been watching as Apollo 11 landed on the moon. The words, “The Eagle has landed” were heard with a slight delay. I listened intently that evening to hear what would happen and when. At church the next morning my question was if there would be a television, we could watch at the home of the family that was hosting the event.

The answer was, of course. We ate, played games, and stayed alert to what was happening on the moon and at mission control in Houston, Texas. A few minutes before the door of the Lunar Excursion Module was opened, we all gathered around the TV.

We waited with Uncle Walter as Armstrong and Aldrin prepared to vacate the LEM. Mike Collins was orbiting the moon in Columbia. Viewers all around the world were watching. This had never happened before.

Apollo 8 with its three-man crew had orbited the moon the previous December. That was a first. There was no LEM on this flight. It wasn’t ready, yet. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth” was heard from the craft on Christmas Eve. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders were on board. Borman did the reading. This showed the difference between the Soviets and Americans. We saw God where we were. They never saw Him.

James McDivitt, David Scott, and Rusty Schweickart Flew the Apollo 9 with the first LEM in March of 1969. The docking and undocking of the command and lunar modules were tested. It working as expected. The only problem was that they never left Earth’s orbit. They did test the moon suits during a spacewalk.

In May Apollo 10 went back to the moon. It had a LEM and the lander undocked and went within 8 miles of the surface of the moon. They fired the ascent engine before reaching the point of no return. Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan were onboard the LEM while john Young flew the command module. The two crafts redocked and left lunar orbit to return to the Earth.

As this young man watched on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did what had never been done before. They walked on the surface of the moon. A TV camera on the lander showed us as Neil stepped off the ladder and said, “That’s one small step for a man and a giant leap for mankind.”

As we all know all three of the Apollo 11 astronauts returned home from the moon. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 Apollo missions also returned to the moon before the end of the moon missions. We all know about the problems on Apollo 13 that prevented them from landing. Some of the astronauts drove golf balls or moon rovers while on the surface.

If you hear that the Apollo 11 landing was a hoax by the government, do not believe it. Not only did U.S. astronauts land on the moon once. They went there nine times and landed six times. A total of twelve Americans walked on the surface.  

Take my word for it. I was that fourteen-year-old boy that walked on the moon with all of them through the miracle of live television. I never needed video games in the sixties and seventies because we had the space race. Watching real people explore the unknown in real-time beats any computer simulation.

©Copyright 2022 by Charles Kensinger