Let’s make an assumption here. As a large, diversified population, this country is never at a loss for dissenters. And the fact that we have them, and that they feel so free to speak up, says everything you need to know about us.
Having a messy, sometimes undisciplined, populace that is unafraid to rock the boat until it practically capsizes is perhaps the most healthy manifestation of basic democracy.
That’s what we have now, and that’s what we had at the end of the 1960s, when differences of opinion about the war in Vietnam almost tore us apart. We had the same divisions as we do now. Whether it was Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon, Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin, we listened to the same old propaganda … the same arguments about the same things.
But all that said, there is nothing more powerful than a united United States of America. And that is one of the lasting memories of the first moon landing, which happened 50 years ago today.
This country has been truly united, either in jubilation or grief, four times in my almost-66 years. And three of those occasions were incredibly tragic: John F. Kennedy’s assassination, when the Challenger space shuttle exploded right after it took off, and on Sept. 11, 2001.
The one time we were united in joy, wonder and awe was on July 20, 1969, when the Eagle landed on the surface of the moon.
If you weren’t awe-struck, there was something wrong with you. At that moment, the United States of America did what many, if not all, thought impossible less than a decade earlier: to put a man on the moon and get him back safely.
That was the challenge JFK laid out before us in 1961, a time when the president said it was so, then it was so. Kennedy imbued a can-do spirit — almost the same kind of energy that Ronald Reagan instilled in us 20 years later, when he assumed office in the middle of a period of national self-doubt and uncertainty.
Whether you agreed or disagreed with his politics, it was hard not to take Kennedy’s cue when he confidently declared, in a famous speech at Rice University, “we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
And was it ever. Just when we were lulled into thinking these things were automatic, and that we’d conquered the technology involved to ask someone to sit on top of an atomic bomb as it detonates (which is what the Saturn V rocket was, basically), and blast off into space, there was a tragic accident during a simulated takeoff on Apollo 1. A flash fire inside the capsule cost three astronauts — one of them Gus Grissom, an original Mercury 7 astronaut — their lives.
It’s probably a sign of the times that we absorbed that tragedy and soldiered on. I wonder if that would happen today.
At any rate, it made us appreciate what these astronauts risked every time they sat atop that atomic bomb, and waited for someone, in their words, to “light that candle.”
We all watched the Apollo 8 astronauts read from the book of Genesis (with a long-distance image of the Earth in the background) on Christmas Eve, 1968. We endured test runs and “dress rehearsals” of Apollos 9 and 10, all the while waiting as patiently as we could for the real deal.
The real deal came on July 16, when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sat in a space capsule on top of one of those Saturn V rockets and were hurled into space. They sped without incident to the moon.
Documentaries today put more emphasis on the glitches and fears of the crew and the NASA command center, but honestly, nobody my age (15 at the time) knew or cared about them. When were we going to land on the moon?
On an otherwise sleepy late afternoon on July 20, we gathered breathlessly around our TV sets like those apes that surrounded the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
I know in my house, there wasn’t a sound. Nothing else mattered. By Sunday afternoon, we’d known about Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Didn’t matter. I didn’t even know how the Red Sox did (for the record, they beat the Orioles, 6-5). For that moment, the war wasn’t an issue. Nothing. Else. Mattered.
The sense of relief when Armstrong touched down, and he confirmed “The Eagle has landed,” was palpable. We were too numb waiting with bated breath to comprehend the fact that there was about eight minutes of fuel left in the lunar module. All we knew is that the descent to the moon’s surface was interminable.
So was the wait for the hatch to open so Armstrong, who looked strangely like Buck Rogers did in all those space flicks, could climb down the ladder and onto the surface. Not a very gregarious fellow, Armstrong at least knew that he had to say something for posterity: “That’s one small step for man … one giant leap for mankind.” It worked then, and it works now.
At that moment, anything was possible. The moon. Mars. The entire solar system. What we accomplished on that day was astronomical (pun intended). We did something no one else could do, and as an extra boost, we beat the Russians (don’t discount how much the Cold War had to do with the space race). And regardless of where we were on the political spectrum, we could all agree that this was a tremendous source of pride for the nation, and that we all had a right to bask in it.
That was 50 years ago. And it was the last time, really, that the United States could take a break from the tension and just celebrate something wonderful.
Can we ever have that feeling again?