<p>I was already in college and watched it in a local dive bar/restaurant.</p>
<p>The Apollo program in general, personified by Neil Armstrong and Aldrin, was something that made me really want to immigrate to the US, the Manhattan project being the other significant landmark.
Unfortunately my first Man memory is shameful - stayed up to listen to it on radio and fell asleep some time before egress from the lunar module.</p>
<p>More recently, I listened to the audio version of “Rocket Man” by Craig Nelson (strongly recommend it to anyone who has long commutes) and it gave a fascinating discussion on the back-room wheelings-and-dealings on the decision on who was to step out first. Apparently based on the layout of the lunar module and the roles of Armstrong and Aldrin, it would have made more sense for the latter to get out first, but Armstrong had seniority, and Aldrin unsuccessfully lobbied to be the first man. The stakes are so high for gold vs silver or bronze - can anyone name #3 or 4 without going to Wiki? </p>
<p>Great man and great story. RIP good sir.</p>
<p>^^ Michael Collins was #3 on that flight; I don’t believe there were four. (I think … going to check now, but that’s my first answer).</p>
<p>ETA – I was right about Collins, but I think the word is “mission” not “flight.”</p>
<p>I was at Girl Scout camp. Everyone came to the dining hall to watch on a black and white television. I don’t remember the images as much as I remember that conveying the magnitude of the achievement.</p>
<p>LasMa, I wasn’t clear - I meant #3, 4, 5, … to set foot on the moon. Collins wasn’t a player in this. Curiously bad week for the Armstrong name.</p>
<p>I remember feeling great pride in my country. It felt to me like anything was possible.</p>
<p>I remember my parents getting me up to watch and going to the window to see the moon. Thought we could see it there not on TV. I was seven…</p>
<p>I, too, was a rising college freshman, and the Saturday night before the moon walk I met my now-husband on a blind date. He was a sophomore at the college I was about to attend, and a mutual friend had set us up. The day before our date was when Ted Kennedy drove his car off the Chappaquidick bridge, killing Mary Jo Kopechne (living in Mass., we heard as much about this as we did about the moon landing). All three events are forever linked in my mind, odd as that is. The moon landing was the most thrilling happening of my life to that point–I don’t think our kids have ever experienced anything as uplifting and awe-inspiring. Needless to say, hearing of Armstrong’s death really stopped me cold. I don’t think the term “end of an era” has ever seemed so apt.</p>
<p>I was 14 and in summer camp, and I watched it with a bunch of other kids on a black and white TV in the dining hall. I remember thinking it was pretty amazing; I had been following the space program since the Mercury and Gemini days.</p>
<p>How old are the other moonwalkers? (and how many are there?) I wonder how many years until there are no living humans who have walked on the moon.</p>
<p>For me- it was the summer between 4th and 5th grades and we were living in Washington State. </p>
<p>While it was interesting to watch - I just remember being PO’d at my parents because the year before we were LIVING in Merritt Island, FL (right by Cocoa Beach) and my parents had a prominent position in the community and personally knew many of the astronauts. Shoot - we had a “pool membership” at a local beach hotel and the astronauts taught my brother to swim and taught me to dive.</p>
<p>So in my young mind…had we still been living in FL …we would have had a much more personal experience. However, I DO have an ORIGINAL Apollo 11 patch. Two patches (one for me, one for my brother) were given to my parents by their NASA friends before we moved away.</p>
<p>It was the summer after I graduated from high school and shortly before I headed off to college. It had been a hot day, and our house had only one wimpy window AC that didn’t keep us very cool. I came home from work from my summer job and took a shower to cool off and sat there and watched the moon walk on TV. I remember wishing the picture was clearer. It was a little over-exposed and indistinct, making it hard to tell exactly when Armstrong stepped off the foot of the lander and onto the lunar soil. </p>
<p>Just as exciting to me was a day or so earlier when they actually landed the craft on the moon. I recall listening to Buzz Aldrin call out the range, altitude, and fuel readings as Neil Armstrong flew the lunar lander in silence - concentrating on the flying and landing.</p>
<p>Sorghum, were you in summer school? They landed on July 20th, a Sunday because I remember being at a Major League Baseball game and people cheered on their transistor radios when it happened…(the landing) and they walked the next day…</p>
<p>My experience was a bit like LasMa’s (post #20).</p>
<p>I was 22 years old and had just met someone with whom I ended up having a serious long-term relationship. The day of the moon landing was our first chance to spend some private time together. </p>
<p>At my friend’s apartment, the only TV was in the living room. All of the other people were glued to it. </p>
<p>“Call us when they’re about to step down,” we said…and they did.</p>
<p>I’d had some sort of vague ridiculous concern that people were not meant to “trespass” on the moon and was relieved that nothing bad occurred.</p>
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<p>Good observation, but in my country all this was possible …</p>
<p>I sat in the crowded living room of my friend’s house with several of his family members. We held our breath as he lowered his boot onto the lunar surface. I thought the announcers did a fantastic job without the hype you’d expect if it happened this evening.</p>
<p>I was 12 years old and at overnight camp, where there normally were no TVs. But for this event, they gathered the entire camp in a hall to watch on one little TV set. It was amazing then and still is.</p>
<p>coureur’s experience is similar to mine, in that I had graduated high school and was looking forward to heading off to college. What made it more memorable for me was that I was in a hotel in Florence, Italy, with a group of my high school classmates who had worked to save for a trip to Europe following graduation. The hotel was kind of a dive, and it was a humid, muggy and evening. We took turns getting Italian ices while the group huddled around the old black and white TV, listening to the Italian newscasters describe the event through their cultural lens.
The evening is still vivid in my memory.</p>
<p>For me, it was summer between 6th and 7th grade. My mom had decided it would be fabulous idea to spend that summer in Israel, with her going to a school to learn Hebrew, and my brother and me enrolled at an overnight camp. Neither of us had ever attended overnight camp before, and we were not enthralled. The camp was at a boarding school, and had kids from many countries, with all staff required to know English. It was still awful. (This was just two years after Six Day War, there were bomb shelters everywhere, and it was pretty scary for an 11 year old pretty sheltered kid.) Anyway, the camp directors knew that this moon landing thing was HUGE for the American kids and wanted to do something special for us. So they gathered us one day to practice singing Star Spangled Banner, and told us that the astronauts were coming to see us. Yeah. Right. (We may have been young, but we really were not that gullible.) I don’t think we got to see the actual landing on TV, but a few days later, they had all of the campers line up along the camp streets, and along came a convertible with three guys sitting on the back a la parade beauty queen, with bee keeper-like helmets on, waving at us as we sang the dam* anthem. The whole summer was a giant bust (albeit full of 1969 historical events as mentioned by others: Charle Manson, etc. which we read about in LIFE or TIME or whatever), but to this day, the inanity of this story brings my brother and me to tears of laughter every time we tell it.</p>
<p>Mortality. I grew up hearing (stentorious tone) “In your lifetime, man will go to the moon”. </p>
<p>It happened, so one could die at any time now.</p>