I too was in Trafalgar Square... hi Richard Urycki, Frank and Sheri! I was 15...my own summer of love. It was one of the last times I can remember feeling overwhelmed with pride and love of country.

Posted by: Diane J. (Costa Rica) on July 21, 2009 11:39PM

I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, it Farragut State Park, Idaho along with 34,000 other scouts. The organizers recognized the historical significance of the event and for the landing and Neil Armstrong's step on to the lunar surface all of the scouts in attendance where in a natural amphitheater watching the event on huge screens, big enough for all of us to get a great view.
Being at the Jamboree and witnessing the events with all my other fellow scouts made this historical event that much more of a great memory for me.

Posted by: Dean Rhodes (Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio) on July 21, 2009 8:25AM

I grew up in Florida and rocket launches were a big deal in our family. When we weren't physically at the Cape we would sometimes climb up on the roof of our house to catch a glimpse of a rocket in flight, it was pretty cool! My father, Stanley M. Quaggin, Sr., was a Professional Parade Float Decorator and Builder in Florida and was invited to decorate for special events around the U.S. and the America's. We loved it when dad was called for a special event in or near the Cape. Dad had a special pass for the Cape Canaveral (Then known as Cape Kennedy) Apollo 11 event. I remember Vice President, Spiro Agnew, and dignitaries from all over the world, and lots of photographers; it was fun! We were located close to the launch in a secured area. It was crazy with excitment and people running all over the place! I remember little gift bags with cheese snacks and memorabilia were given to the visitors sitting in the bleachers; mainly high profile guests and dignitaries. I was a little girl and they didn't pay any attention to me or my brother. I did get one of the gift bags and felt like I was a princess eating exotic cheese from other countries. This was better than popcorn at the movies and I had front row seat at Apollo 11; the most amazing event of the century! We arrived early and our family celebrated my brother's birthday the day before and dad kept saying, "Remember kids this is a spectacular event in history!" - "Man is going to the moon!" - "In the future people will look back on this day and you can say you were here!" - "You are a part of history today!" I remember how happy mom and dad were. We brought along our camper and a black and white portable television. Once Apollo 11 was out of view in the sky, dad turned on our small TV. People gathered around our camper for another glimpse of the rocket in space as it was being covered live. I've been searching for people photographs online from that day at the Cape, wondering if maybe a photographer snapped a picture of us that day. Email: peacewealthy at gmail dot com.

Posted by: Suzy Quaggin (Florida) on July 21, 2009 5:50AM

Hi Sheri (seattle) and Richard Ulrycki.
I was on Trafalgar Square too on that memorable evening !

Posted by: Frank (Antwerp ( Belgium)) on July 21, 2009 3:08AM

I was 18 and at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan taking a Counselor in Training course. While the space shot was airing I was doing my laundry and decided it might be a good time to call home for the first time in four weeks. My father worked for Bendix Aerospace in Ann Arbor and I had seen the space shaker, anti gravity chamber etc., but had no idea of the significance of the space shot or my father's involvement. So, when he answered the phone and said, "I can't talk now they are planting the Bendix package on the moon!" I was hurt. How could this event be more important to my father than speaking with his only daughter, didn't he miss me? Now,looking back on the entire event I realize how unthinking I was to interrupt his viewing of the landing, and wish I had paid more attention.

Posted by: Suzanne Salvo (Ashland, Ohio) on July 20, 2009 11:30AM

I was at Trafalgar Square (It's nice to see someone else who experienced this amazing day--Hi Richard Ulrycki) I had to go home to Oregon the next day--It was a joyous time!!

Posted by: sheri (seattle) on July 19, 2009 8:44PM

Like November 22 and September 11, July 20 will be a date that always stays with me. In 1969 I was in Barquisemeto, Venezuela with my husband expecting our first child to be born in just a few weeks. We seldom watched TV but on that date borrowed a small portable set so that we could see the action. We were very excited to listen to the news of the moon landing. Besides being amazed that we had placed a man on the moon, my husband and I were doubly amazed that the whole world was watching. At the time of the landing the city was eerily quiet. We walked to our balcony to look out and saw neither a single person nor a single car on the normally busy main street of the town. Everyone was inside watching Neil Armstrong and his crew land on the moon.

Posted by: Patricia Bartoleit (Wooster, OH) on July 19, 2009 7:50PM

We were living in a rented farmhouse in Iowa on July 20, 1969. I was up late, canning green beans and watching a small portable TV on the kitchen counter. When the spacecraft landed, I went to get our first child, then ten months old, from his crib and held him in front of the TV. He was sound asleep, but I thought it was important that he see that amazing event, a man walking on the moon.

Posted by: Carolyn Wheeler (Millersburg, Ohio) on July 19, 2009 7:23PM

I spent the summer of 1969 in Paris doing library research. That meant that most of the time I was cooped up in the reading room of the French National Library. I had little access to TV, but did of course read newspapers occasionally and listen to radio. I did follow the story from a distance, but remember being very proud to bean American.

As it turns out, in my later life as Director of International Programs at KSU, I met the woman who became an everyday name in Japan because of being hired at the last minute to be live on TV, in front of a screen showing the feed from the moon and doing simultaneous interpretation from English into Japanese. She is now a professor of translation and still has a weekly TV show about language and translation.

Posted by: Dr. Mark R. Rubin (Kent State University) on July 19, 2009 7:20PM

40 years ago, at age 18, after my freshman year in college, I was studying in Spain. We watched the walk on the moon on a small black and white TV in our teacher's dining room. As I recall it was mid-morning?

Posted by: marion murfey on July 19, 2009 7:17PM

July 20, 1969--my 18th birthday. I was with my family and lots of other people from our church at a gathering at our church camp in Ashtabula County. The camp manager had set up a small TV in the upstairs room of the lodge, and we all gathered around to watch the moon landing. After the program, we went outside and looked up at the moon and marveled that there were actually men up there, walking around. It was a birthday to remember.

Posted by: Stephanie House (Silver Lake, Oh) on July 19, 2009 6:32PM

I was 14 years old at that time, and my family planned a camping vacation at Nags Head, NC. It dawned on me during the planning stages of that trip that we would be there during the moonwalk. I lobbied to take a small black and white television on the trip so we could watch the moonwalk. (We were tent camping, but the sites had electric outlets available.)

We listened to radio coverage of the landing as we drove. They landed while we were near Tarboro, NC. We made it to our campsite in Nags Head area, set up camp, broke out the TV, and discovered that we could get audio only of the coverage on one major network, and audio and video of only PBS, which was broadcasting the Boston Pops with Arthur Fiedler on the podium. My father went to the campsite office to inquire where in the area could we go to watch coverage of the moonwalk and was directed to the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, just 5 miles away. We watch the moonwalk there on one of many TVs set up around the museum on site at the memorial.

We went back the next morning to pace off the distance from our TV vantage point to the lift off point of the Wright Brothers’ first successful flight. I don’t remember the exact count, but it was in the range of just 200 to 300 yards. I have always thought how cool it was (there is no better word for it than “cool”) to have watched the epitome of mechanized, manned flight from the birthplace of mechanized, manned flight.

Posted by: Thomas J. Campbell (Cleveland) on July 17, 2009 12:03PM

My mother, my brother, my three sisters, and I were gathered around the TV set watching the moon landing. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, my brother said, "well, Dad said he'd never live to see the day when a man walked on the moon." July 20, 1969 was the night before my father's funeral.

Posted by: Lenore Collins (Mentor, Ohio) on July 16, 2009 10:17PM

Brought up in the UK, I guess I pulled my first all-nighter at 10 years old. So excited, I managed to stay up until the early hours of the morning to watch Armstrong step out. One of most memorable moments as a child.

Posted by: Stuart Hamilton (Massillon) on July 16, 2009 10:00PM

Starting in the fall of 1968 I was working at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory). We supported development of the onboard guidance, control, and navigation computer program with a real time computer simulator. During the moon landing we were receiving live telemetry feed from the spacecraft, called "downlink", which was continuously being printed. All eyes were on the column of numbers that indicated the radar altimeter reading, and when it went to "zero", we knew the job was half finished. The other half of the job, the "return safely to earth" part, was ahead.

Posted by: Stephen Goldberger (North Canton) on July 16, 2009 4:40PM

As Neil Armstrong made his way gingerly down the ladder I was losing a ping-pong match to an employee of the Panama Canal Company. I was then serving in the United States Air Force with the 1976 Communications Sq., at Albrook Air Force base located in Panama within walking distance of the canal. As soon as I served during the game I'd look over at the T.V. to see what was happening.

It didn't take long for my opponent to catch on so he'd just wait until he saw my head turning to watch to return my serve. I lost the game and match but all these yrs. later whenever I look at the moon, as I do often, I still think of that afternoon. Losing a ping-pong match was a small price to pay for being able to see Neil's first step on the lunar surface. I'd love to hear the response my opponent would give to your question.

Posted by: Bruce P. Carden on July 16, 2009 2:43PM

My family was on vacation at North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on July 20, 1969. I had just turned 16. My parents, throughout the space program had encouraged our interest in the universe around us and this was the biggest thing to happen in our lifetimes. Even though televison was never part of our vacation time, my father searched and found a small black and white tv to rent somewhere in town.

I remember crowding in around that television with all our family and vacation neighbors, trying to see through the horrible reception and a screen full of snow and the ocean crashing to shore in the background. It was thrilling and I will never forget the excitement leading up to the moonwalk or the people that I shared it with that day. We truly shared one of the most exciting moments of 20th century history.

Posted by: Lucy Proctor Dohar (West Farmington, Ohio) on July 16, 2009 8:58AM

Being 67 this summer, I was raised during the early Disney TV period, which included appearances of Wernher von Braun describing how space flight would be done. I entered college as President Kennedy threw down the challenge, and I followed the progress with great interest…every test and mission. I even followed the directions from the TV coverage on synching camera shutter speeds to TV displays, now a useless tidbit, given today’s LCD screens. It followed naturally that on landing day of Apollo 11, I was intent on having our 6 month old first daughter witness the big event…so…at about 10:30pm, we woke her up, put her in her high chair, and proceeded to engage her with the images coming direct from the moon as Neil Armstrong made his historic moves…and of course took several pictures of her in front of the screen. It was late, and we were tired new parents up when we really needed the sleep…BUT looking back from here, it was worth every bit of the effort...and we still have the picture to prove it.

Posted by: Judson S. Elliott (Kirtland, Ohio) on July 16, 2009 7:28AM

During the late 1960's and well into the 1980's, my family -- my Mom and Dad, my aunt and uncle, my four siblings and three cousins, plus a limitless number of invited friends and relatives -- spent a considerable amount of time at our family's cottage at the Portage Lakes in Akron. Since the lake and associated activities and the ever-present group of friends had so much to offer, it was the "lake policy" to spend most of the time at the lake outside. To help "encourage" us to do so, a portable black and white set was the only television in the cottage, and that was to be used only in the event of rain. Of course, there was no cable back then.

But the week that the astronauts were to land on the moon, now that was a different story. I was twelve years old in 1969 and can clearly remember the adults making sure that one of the family's brought their color television from home so we could all be sure to see Neil Armstrong take that first step. Not only did we have the COLOR set available, but as the astronauts got closer and closer to the Moon, we were often beckoned to the set to see the news covering the astronauts' mission.

Once the space ship landed on the surface of the Moon, everyone huddled together in front of the set, waiting for the astronauts to emerge. As Neil Armstrong came down the ladder and said those memorable words " .. one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", I remember my father and mother turned to each other, neither saying a word, and kissed, in front of all of us, and I believe my aunt and uncle did the same. It was as if to say, "This is something so very special. The Americans did it; they landed on the moon, and we witnessed it ourselves, together".

Several days later I was standing on the dock at the lake and happened to look up at the sky at about 5 pm. I swear to you that the sky had red and white stripes across the horizon with some blue sky peaking out the upper left corner, clearly resembling the American flag. It was unbelievable! My twelve year old mind felt it was as if God himself was paying homage to the astronauts by painting the American flag in the sky. It was an amazing sight and I knew if I told anyone what I'd seen, they'd never believe me so I quickly ran to the first adult I saw -- my uncle -- and without a word, simply pointed to the sky. He, too, saw the significance. I asked him right then to promise me that for the rest of our lives he, too, would also remember that moment and that sky, and verify what we'd both seen that day.
And he has.

Posted by: Nancy Leffler (Massillon, OH) on July 15, 2009 4:08PM

I had been interested in the stars at a young age. We stood in the backyard with our neighbors and watched Sputnik go over when I was ten. Mom would set up the TV trays in the living room so that we could watch the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo mission whether we were having breakfast, lunch or supper.

Being all excited about the first moonwalk, I had a special way to mark the occasion. I had a jigsaw puzzle of "2001 A Space Odyssey" that I was saving for that day. I was parked on the floor in front of our old black and white TV, watching, listening and assembling pieces as the mission unfolded that night. I don't remember if I finished it before the astronauts walked on the moon but I do know this: The puzzle may have kept me awake so that I wouldn't miss anything!

Not long after, I made a painting of an astronaut on the moon. I still have it along with the newspapers from those days...

Posted by: Janie Kintz (Akron) on July 15, 2009 12:58PM

I will always remember where I was on July 20, 1969. After hitchhiking from Luxembourg through Belgium, then ferrying across the channel to Dover, England, two buddies and I hitched up to London and were fortunate to find a bed and breakfast at a private school in Hampstead Heath just outside of London for a pound a day ($2.40). We were 19 and wide eyed about everything we saw. But nothing was cooler than being an American in England during the impending moon landing. We heard about a huge screen being erected at Trafalgar Square in central London and the live video to catch the moment. Then on July 20th, sometime after dark, with Trafalgar Square packed with people, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and everyone cheered. It gave me goosebumps. All those folks cheering for America's success were also cheering for themselves. Afterall, it was a "giant leap for mankind."

Posted by: Richard Urycki on July 15, 2009 12:52PM

Myself and several friends attended a Led Zeppelin concert that evening. This was at Music Carnival which was a large tent with in the round seating. I think the farthest you could be from the stage was 30 rows or so. The opening group was the James Gang. This was the summer after the release of their first album. As I recall we heard about the lunar landing on the radio as we were going home. I suspect we all agreed that was the second coolest thing we experienced that evening.

Posted by: Bob Bauman (North Canton) on July 15, 2009 12:50PM

July 20, 1969. I was 18, the oldest of five Schneider kids, on vacation with my family at a cabin at Salt Fork State Park. Our portable televison went with us. Can't remember if that was to watch the moon landing, or just because my dad hated to be anywhere without it!

What I remember the most, along with watching Armstrong's first footsteps on the moon, was my mom's reaction. My mom is talented and intelligent, but at the time, she was so busy with a husband, five kids, our grandfather, and a full-time job, that I never knew her to take much time to "smell the roses" or go "wishing on a star." But what I do remember about that night was my mom going out onto the screened-in porch of the cabin to look up at the moon and ponder out loud how amazing it was to think that people were up there, walking around, right at that moment!

Her reaction must have seemed so out-of-character to me, that her personal wonder and amazement has always been joined in my memory with that historically amazing night.

Posted by: Kathy Becks (Medina) on July 15, 2009 12:49PM

I was six years old, living in Albuquerque New Mexico. I remember sitting in our living room watching the console TV with rapt attention. I, as were all kids that age, was entranced with the thought of space travel and the ability to actually SEE a man walking on the moon was simply amazing. We watched and listened to Walter Cronkite as he commented on the strange things that the people at NASA were saying and waited eagerly for the moment. Finally those words: “Houston – The Eagle has landed!” were heard. A little while later, the TV showed the blurry black and white images of a man in a space suit half climbing, half hopping down the ladder.

Finally, Neal Armstrong stepped out onto the moon. I was so excited! I ran to my room and looked up at the moon in hope of seeing them but failing miserably. None the less, that night firmly implanted a desire to some day walk on the moon myself.

I never did manage to go into space, much less to the moon. My eyesight has always been too poor to be an astronaut. None the less, that didn’t keep me from working at NASA where I made sure never to miss a shuttle launch. I look forward to the day when men will once again walk on the moon and possibly even Mars and beyond. I may not be around to see them, but I know those days will come.

Posted by: Keith Dickinson (Kansas City, KS) on July 15, 2009 10:15AM

I was in Mexico City on vacation with my brother and parents the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. We were walking along the Avenida Juarez that afternoon when we noticed a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk. Someone had turned a television around to face the shop window and put speakers outside. Mexican residents were watching Apollo 11's televised approach to the moon, with the English commentary over-dubbed in Spanish.

Later that same day, we went to a restaurant in the Zona Rosa for dinner. It was early and we were the only patrons. When the waiter - who spoke only Spanish - realized we were Americans, he went into the kitchen and returned with a huge map. It was a chart of the lunar surface showing where Apollo 11 was scheduled to land. Then he brought a black and white protable television out of the kitchen and set it up next to our table. Pretty soon the entire staff was in the dining room with us, watching the landing approach.

I was only 16, but I thought it was pretty amazing that people in Mexico were even more excited about landing on the moon than we were.

Posted by: Karen Schaefer (WKSU) on July 13, 2009 12:55PM

I was in Canada, near Campbellford, Ont. on our annual family vacation at a fishing camp on the Trent River and the owners brought their TV out and I think everyone in the camp was on the lawn to watch the moon landing. At the same time we could look up at the moon and remember how amazing it was that we could actually see the moon while we were watching it on that TV. I was 16 at the time and I have never forgotten that experience.

Georgeann Vosi
Minerva, Ohio

Posted by: Anonymous on July 13, 2009 12:01PM