NASA Photo
…we sat glued in front of the television set at Janet’s house in East Texas and watched as humankind set foot on our Moon. Spectacular in and of itself, it offered proof that we could do anything we set our minds and hands to. It offered proof that the future was ours to shape. Say what one may about the leaders involved, it was a Grand Vision achieved. With both my parents working at NASA, Houston, and me baby-sitting for astronaut families, it was particularly grand for me. In later years, it was our pleasure to get to know Buzz Aldrin via our activities in the National Space Club. While the astronauts, for the most part, would tell you they weren’t special people, just skilled workers doing their job, they were men for whom the best odds of success were pretty sorry and they succeeded in spite of those odds. We know men and women like them are still out there, but as far as grand visions go, those seem hard to find, and today it seems the odds must be near perfect for an undertaking to begin. We are so glad to have been alive and aware when humankind did this.
