Locals reflect on memories of moon landing

Hey Moon, thanks for the memories.

It’s been almost 50 years since mankind first took that “giant leap” onto the surface of Earth’s moon, finally getting physical with a relationship that for much of human history only consisted of romantic poetry and yearning gazes through a telescope.

And as Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to land on the moon, the rest of the world watched in voyeuristic awe on their black and white television sets. Most people did, anyway.

Clovis’ Dawn Lampley was 12 years old at the time and watched it with her parents and five siblings at their home in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.

“I remember exactly what we were doing,” she told The News.

As she should — not only was it a defining moment for civilization, it was also her father’s 44th birthday. They had his cake decorated like the moon for the occasion, and after the TV broadcast the kids dragged a mattress into the back yard and took turns jumping onto it from the roof of their one-story house to simulate the gravitational bounce of the man on the moon.

Her brother wore a bowl on his head, fastened with their father’s necktie, for a space helmet effect.

Junior Landess had just graduated Clovis High School that year and shared with many in some initial disbelief at the achievement.

“I remember looking at it and saying, ‘That can’t be true,’ but after years of learning what they had to do to get there, I believe it happened,” he told The News on Friday while watching a little league game in Clovis. “And if not, then they pulled off a hell of a good stunt.”

Janie Acosta was five years out of Roswell High School and living then with her husband and first daughter at an Air Force base in Indiana. She said it was “exciting and scary” to watch, but had no incredulity over the event.

“It did happen — we watched it on TV,” she said. “I have more faith in America than that. And if they did that, they can do anything.”

Reminiscing Tuesday at Clovis’ Friendship Senior Center on the event now a half-century past, Acosta and Mike Lusk, 73, talked about later developments. NASA’s discovery in this century of water on or inside Mars raises a prospect for life elsewhere that both were keen to embrace.

“How arrogant would we be to think we’re God’s only creation?” Acosta asked. “We can’t even fathom what he’s capable of.”

Not everyone was domestic at the time. Douglas MacArthur Hunter, 76, left his home in Alabama at 19 for a military career that spanned two decades and several continents. He had the option to end his initial four year commitment in 1966, but by then was a young man living only an hour from Paris.

“I was single, so it wasn’t no hard decision to make,” he told The News on Monday at Clovis’ bingo hall.

The following year he left France for assignment at Morón Air Base in Spain, and by the time of the Apollo 11 mission was at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base watching “a big moment in history.”

Portales’ Mack Tucker was meanwhile on a gunboat up the river in Vietnam, 26 years old and in need of some inspiration.

“It gave us all a boost,” he said of the moon landing. “It made me feel proud.”

Bea Harvey at that time was 27 and married with three children in Clovis, but watching the broadcast reminded her of her earlier space-age days growing up in Brownfield, Texas. One of the local radio stations had a contest promising the winner a free trip to the moon. She told The News she wondered at the time if the radio ever made good on that prize.

Other folks had more pressing concerns on the ground of the blue planet.

“Yeah, I saw them going, walking around with those suits on,” said Clovis’ Bobby Gilmore, living in Fort Worth at the time. “Shoot, we were more interested in looking for the drive-in, getting a basket of fish and chips.”