One Small Step for a Man....

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It was 48 years ago yesterday (7/20) that Neil Armstrong took tentative steps down a ladder and onto the lunar surface. For those of you who weren't alive at the time, it was magical. The nation was embroiled in the bitter turmoil of anti-war protests, rioting in the aftermath of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King, domestic terrorism, and all other sorts of things that made the late 60s most uncertain and unsavory. However, that all stopped -- however briefly -- when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and Armstrong walked onto the surface. Coincidentally, my most recent music road trip took me to a stop in Wapakoneta, Ohio, the birthplace of Neil Armstrong. The small town has a museum primarily devoted to Armstrong, but also focusing on the other Ohio-born astronauts (John Glenn, for instance), and the space program in general. There was a replica of the command capsules of both the Apollo and Gemini programs (Armstrong went into space twice during the Gemini program). Standing next to them you see how incredibly tiny the things were (especially the Apollo capsule, which was smaller than the Gemini and held one more person!!). These men were heroes to a generation. To this member of that generation, they are still heroes. I'm thankful that I lived during that era, the time when we fulfilled President Kennedy's statement: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."