Where’s Walter when We Need Him?
Some of us grew up with the U.S. space program. While I was too young to know or care about the Russian launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, I was old enough for the early 60s launch of the U.S. Mercury flights. I remember watching them on TV—with Walter Cronkite as our trusted guide and narrator. He was so good at what he did, and his boyish excitement spilled out with each launch he covered.
I have a pretty distinct memory from February 1962 when John Glenn made complete orbits of the earth. The Russians had done one lap first, but we did three triumphant laps! I remember going outside on a sunny day, and I can remember standing in between the two trunks of the white birch trees on our front yard in Cheshire, CT. I was looking up in earnest at the blue sky above me. I just knew I would see John Glenn in his space capsule, and if I was lucky, he’d see me waving as he went overhead. I don’t know that I had any concept at the time of just how specific viewing conditions had to be to see something like that overhead—starting, of course, with dark skies and not broad daylight! I also assumed that if the capsule was passing over the United States anywhere, that we could all see it everywhere. Oh well.
I also have a vivid memory of the first Moon landing in July 1969. I’d watched the launch, and the night of the landing my parents and sister and I were in the living room in front of the TV. I was sitting in a big wooden rocking chair, in motion. (I rarely sat still when I was younger, and I don’t do so today either!) The TV was sitting just off to my left.
My attention was divided that day, though. With one eye on the TV watching during those long pauses and waiting for SOMETHING to happen on the Moon, my other eye was on the book I was engrossed in… Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O’Hara was trying to get herself out of whatever fix with whichever of the myriad of men she was after, and I was at once in Civil War day Georgia and nearly 240,000 miles away on the Moon.
Scarlett was my companion during the long pauses.
She did take a back seat once Neil Armstrong made his historical trip down the ladder with the little hop to the Moon’s surface. And she waited as he made his well-prepared first-sentence speech—the one that people would later argue endlessly over whether there is a difference between “man” and “mankind” and whether he said, or should have said, “a man.” That nuance was lost on me at the time. I was just excited that we had pulled off such an adventure!
I remember watching at least some of the Shuttle flights and landings, back when that was novel enough to be deemed important for TV coverage. And I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. I was teaching at the time, at a residential treatment facility for emotional disturbed adolescents. I don’t really remember exactly HOW I got the news, but I remember trying to call Bob on a school phone to make sure he’d heard. And I went back in my classroom and told my kids—in retrospect, given the circumstances and the fact that so many of those kids had mental health issues, I probably was not the best one to relay the news. One boy visibly paled and stood up and said, “Mrs. Vickers, I’ve GOT to make a phone call!!” It turned out his uncle worked on the launch pad, and at the time, I really didn’t know where or when or how the Shuttle had exploded. Thankfully, his uncle was fine and nowhere near danger from the explosion, but it did teach me a lesson about being careful about delivering upsetting news with minimal information.
Today I watched the launch of the Space-X Crew Dragon, returning American astronauts to space from our launching pads for the first time since 2011. Once again, the nation stopped what it was doing to watch, hoping all would go well. It did. A beautiful sight to see!
Tonight, with the help of a smart phone app for Heavens-Above, we may get a glimpse of the Dragon passing low over the northwestern skies, followed by the International Space Station about 10 minutes later. Tomorrow night, we might see both pass over again—this time docked.
I’ll resist the temptation to wave this time, or at least not expect any return wave from those astronauts. It will be dark, after all.
I do miss Walter though.
Black boy in Chicago,
Playing in the street.
Not enough to wear
Not near enough to eat.
But I know he saw it
On that July afternoon.
He saw a man named Armstrong,
Walking on the Moon.
–Reg Lindsay, “Armstrong”
© Melissa Clark Vickers, 2020
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