Apollo 11 astronauts (from left) Neil Armstrong, Michael Collin, Buzz Aldrin (Photo NASA)
Quite apart from the fact that my name in Sanskrit means moon, I am generally interested in Earth’s only groupie. As NASA and the world mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Saturn V rocket on July 16, 1969, that carried the Apollo 11 crew to the moon as well as their actual arrival on July 20, I have been thinking about my other tangential connection to the mission this morning. It came courtesy of my father Manharray.
My father had a pen pal in America in 1969-70 named Carol with whom he corresponded regularly. She would occasionally send some minor mementos via mail in those days but the one that I remember the most was a kit that contained photographs of the three astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins—posing in front of a model of the moon as well as a soft record that supposedly had all the recordings of the event, including Armstrong’s famous words “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” If memory serves, I think that soft record was produced by CBS for NASA. The record’s jacket had a closeup shot of the moon’s surface.
As a barely 9-year-old what I remember the most from that package was the photograph of the three. Last night, while watching a CBS special I saw that picture again and was transported back to my childhood. The legendary anchor Walter Cronkite helmed CBS’s Apollo 11 mission news coverage and was speechless when Armstrong stepped foot on the moon’s surface for the first time.
That moon publicity kit traveled with me during my many moves in India but somewhere along the line I have lost it now. When I first saw the picture (above), which was also the part of the package Carol had sent my father, the face that etched itself instantly was that of Collins’, followed by Armstrong and then Aldrin. In fact, Collins was the most memorable face of the three for me. It was much later that I found out that he was assigned to stay in orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon.
That we had a moon kit made us somewhat coveted among out immediate neighbors in Ahmedabad. It was almost as if my father had been to the moon. (Literary exaggeration.) That joy did not last long since my father died in May, 1970 and the only memorable inheritance we got was that moon kit.
