Meeting the Man On The Moon
Nothing makes me feel a little old like an anniversary, with a big number on it, of an event I remember like it was yesterday. I refer to next month’s 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Like hundreds of millions of people around the world on that July night, I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step off their lunar module onto the moon’s surface.
It happened late at night in the Eastern time zone, so my parents woke up my brother and me to make sure we saw history as it happened. That’s probably what makes my entire memory of the first moonwalk almost like a memory of a dream; those two men in space suits, bouncing along through the lunar dust, the black and white television pictures miraculously beamed hundreds of thousands of miles through space to where we sat in our suburban family room. It still gives me shivers.
It also feels like the memory of a dream because it’s been so long since that kind of space travel was part of the American experience. Believe it or not, in just three years we’ll be marking the 40th anniversary of man’s LAST mission to the moon, Apollo 17. It’s strange and disconcerting to look so far back at something everyone thought was just a beginning, and realize it was really an ending.
Anyway, we’ll share more of our misty memories of the moon landing next month. The reason I’m blogging about this tonight is that I got to hang out for a little while with Buzz Aldrin, the second man to ever set foot on the moon. He was at a party thrown by GQ magazine, to preview the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. (GQ’s publisher, Peter Hunsinger, was one of my best friends since we were in elementary school in Cincinnati, and in a nice little example of things coming full circle, was watching the moon landing that same night just down the street from me.) I got a chance to talk with Aldrin for a few minutes at the party:
Flawless Foundation
I also tonight visited the first annual Perfection Party for the Flawless Foundation at the U.N Plaza Hotel. It's a new organization dedicated to helping children facing the challenges of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
For more information about the foundation, visit its website at flawlessfoundation.org
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Comments: 15
Good interview. Its a big universe filled with unlimited resources. Hope we get back on the right path and start going to the stars.
Well Jim I remember that day too. And as the theme of Start states: TO go where no man has gone before and that is to that final frontier." Maybe someday.
Dearest Jim,
Thank you so much for attending our party. Your speech was Flawless and we are so grateful for your time and attention. You are such a rockstar advocate and philanthropist. The world of non profits is so lucky to have you.
With much love and gratitude
Janine
Founder
Flawless Foundation
Thank you for coming to The Perfection Party and supporting The Flawless Foundation. It was a pleasure to meet you and your wife Lauren. You both added so much to our event. Your speech set the tone for the evening!
Dear Jim,
Thank you for our shout out here on your blog and for
featuring us on the news Wednesday night.
Your loving support and exposure with Flawless is so inspiring to us who are creating advanced ways to love, nurture and serve these children. We are very inspired by your courage and dedication to Fearlessly stand for the best care! And we are right there with you...
Respectfully,
Lori Sutherland Goldfein
Board Member
Flawless Foundation
Dear Jim,
It was really wonderful to hear you speak at the Flawless Foundation Perfection Party. You managed to capture both the vision of the Flawless organization as well as the spirit of it's founder, Janine. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to help a worthy cause.
Many Blessings,
Caroline Kohles
Senior Director of Health & Wellness
The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan
Thank you so much for attending the Perfection Party. Your support and presence at this event meant a great deal to everyone.
In gratitude,
Beth Barbaro
Dear Jim, Thank you for attending The Flawless Foundation's first annual Perfection Party. Your participation was greatly appreciated and your speech highlighted the important work of The Flawless Foundation. Best regards, Liz Stern, President, Global Giving Advisors
Thank you for supporting the Flawless Foundation. You are so generous, and it is people like you that make events such as the Perfection Party possible. It was an honor to hear you speak.
Sincerely,
Susanne Barbaro
Thank you for supporting the Flawless Foundation. You are so generous, and it is people like you that make events such as the Perfection Party possible. It was an honor to hear you speak.
Sincerely,
Susanne Barbaro
Thank you for supporting the Flawless Foundation. You are so generous, and it is people like you that make events such as the Perfection Party possible. It was an honor to hear you speak.
Sincerely,
Susanne Barbaro
Jim,
Great! I know for you to have had that interview with Buzz Aldrin was one to remember for many years to come. To remember exactly were you where on the day he landed on the moon. It was a life time memory. I wish to someone day go to the moon. I often kid around with my family and friends and I think is exciting to hear Buzz say that someday that dream would come true for some else and for us to see.
Thanks,
Nancy Maldonado
Bronx, New York
On the night of the first moon walk, my family and I were at the beach club. We had a little 9 inch TV, which was plugged into the only electrical outlet available. The crowd was quit large that gathered, because no one wanted to take the chance of missing the event. Everyone cheered. We didn't get home until after midnight. I'll remember that night forever.
Wow
Dear Jim. I remember the occasion very well since I anchored it on Ch. 11. I was then (and remained until very recently) a professor of Classics and Middle Eastern and Islamic history at NYU. I was contacted by one of my former students who held a very middle management position (night janitor?) at Ch. 11. He asked me if I’d like to anchor the moon landing for Ch. 11. I said I didn’t know much about space. He said not to worry: he had somebody to handle the “hard science”; I would do the “Big Picture.” The “hard science” guy turned out to be a weather man from Staten Island. Lovely.
We showed up at the appointed time and were stashed (without makeup! Never again, I vowed) in a tiny studio. We didn’t get much face time since the night engineer wisely stayed with the feed from Houston (or was it Cape Canaveral?) and cut to us only very occasionally. It didn’t much matter. In that day of John Tillman and before the invention of Mr. G (do they still talk about Tex Antoine there?) Ch. 11 mostly showed Yankee games by day—that tells you how long ago it was—and Perry Mason re-runs by night so there wasn’t a very strong fan base. Besides who would watch me paint the Big Picture when they had the Big Picture himself, Walter Cronkite, at the other end of the very short TV dial?
Well, there were a couple: my wife and son in the Village (he too had often to be reawakened) and my mother in the Bronx, one hand on the rabbit-ears and the other on her rosary. She thought it was terrific, best moon landing ever. So did I. You must understand how gratifying it is, when people ask you where you were when the first man landed on the moon, you get to say, “Oh, yeah. I anchored that on TV.”
One long-term effect of this is that my wife and I remain devoted watchers of WPIX. There’s Mr. G, of course, on whom I have modeled by classroom behavior, right down to the shot cuffs, but we’re also huge fans of you and Kaity (who is unbearably *cute*). And yes, OK, it is the lead-in to “Two and a Half Men.” So continued success and keep up the good work (The Michael Jackson coverage and the Gossip Girl promos, not so much).
Frank Peters