Editorial

Where were you 40 years ago today?

Monday, July 20, 2009

Where were you when man first walked on the moon?

For many of us, the question is moot; it was 40 years ago today, after all.

The newsroom is probably fairly representative of our community, four had vague memories, one wasn't born until years after Neil Armstrong's "One small step."

"My mother woke my sister and me and we watched it on TV," said Lorri Sughroue, city editor. "We didn't know what the big deal was, and we went back to bed." She remembers the television image "was all fuzzy and blurry.

How much did sports editor John Mesh remember?

"Not very much. I do remember watching the space missions with my dad."

The space program broke the television barrier, Mesh said, and they were able to talk the nuns at his parochial school into bringing a set back for the 1970 and 1971 World Series'.

Regional editor Connie Jo Discoe recalled one of the first uses of the cliche, "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they (fill in the blank.)"

"My mom was coming back from Farnam from seeing my grandpa and grandma when she had car trouble" in Moorfield.

She would have called for help, but Moorfield didn't yet have telephone service.


One thing that sports editor John Mesh did recall was Walter Cronkite's reaction to the landing: "Wow."

As he did from World War II through the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam, until he signed off from the regular broadcast in 1981, Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at 92, spoke for us all.

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