July, 2019
Washington -- On my wall, largely forgotten, is a certificate from the Department of Defense, Manager for Manned Space Flight Support Operations: "Be it known by these presents that [my name] USN served in support of Department of Defense operations during the Apollo XI mission, the first Moon landing flight in July 1969."
Actually, that is a huge overstatement. I was in Venice, Italy, the day of the landing and had nothing to do with Apollo XI. I was meeting with an Air Force captain and a Philco tech rep enroute to a routine inspection of a Defense Communications Agency outpost in nearby Pordenone.
It was hot. We gathered in a hotel lobby in Mestre to watch live television of the landing, about 4 a.m. local time. The tech rep left early, hoping for cooler temperatures up in the Veneto. My captain colleague, a native of Puerto Rico, and I stuck it out as we did not want to miss witnessing the historic occasion. The television showed only the blurriest of views, but the Italian announcers narrated it all convincingly. There were many cheers from our hotel crowd, in many languages.
My thoughts went back to six months earlier, when I had a more significant involvement with the Apollo program. When the Apollo Eight astronauts splashed down in the remote Pacific, I had been the communications watch officer aboard USS Arlington (AGMR-2), on-site and responsible for being in touch with the rest of the world. Circling the moon had been the great Apollo accomplishment to date. Successful splashdown and recovery were not a given and we all breathed easier when we saw astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders give us a wave and a thumbs up that they were fine.
We two Americans in the Mestre hotel in July celebrated the moon landing as did everyone else there, as a great human accomplishment that transcended nationality. We got our share of special congratulations when the crowd recognized us as countrymen of the astronauts.
It was a giant leap for mankind, for all humanity. American goals were human goals, and all honorable. It seems so long ago.
