“We all watched in wonder, with Walter Cronkite.” But I watched my father, too, July 20, 1969. Outside it was a muggy evening, and everyone had vacated the rowhouse stoops, where neighbors gathered on summer nights to chat and listen to Philadelphia Phillies games on transistor radios. Tonight, they were watching black-and-white TVs as window air-conditioners whirred. I watched him: the sense of amazement and awe (a Great Depression boy, he was not easily overwhelmed) at Commander Neil Armstrong’s historic hop out onto the moon. This was Jules Verne, Flash Gordon, H.G. Wells, Tom Swift and Commando Cody and the fulfilment of World War II victory. This July 20, I will be thinking of the moon, the stars and the look in my father’s eyes that magical summer night.
