The moon landing was personal moment to those who watched it on LI

They all watched the moon landing on boxy black-and-white TVs. Even today, 50 years later, they remember where they were, how they felt, what they did.

For Long Islanders, July 20, 1969, was particularly personal. Most everyone knew someone who worked at Grumman Corp., the company in Bethpage that designed and built the lunar module: Dads, uncles, cousins, and lots and lots of neighbors.

Anticipation fueled the moment. Day changed to night between when the Eagle landed on the moon at 4:18 and Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface at 10:56. 

Lights went on in living rooms that were normally dark. Television sets buzzed, warming up. 

A 14-year-old boy holed up in his room to watch on a Zenith. A dad grabbed a camera to take pictures of the pictures. A 15-year-old girl ran outside to look at the sky. A mom cheered, cradling her baby daughter.

Here are a few of their stories: 

The real thing

Brian Cavanaugh had the house to himself — a measure of freedom not lost on a 14-year-old boy. His mom and dad had gone to a moon landing party in their Brentwood subdivision.

"Back then, the neighbors got together for many, and any, special occasion," recalled Cavanaugh, who still lives in Brentwood.

Home alone, Cavanaugh decided to mark the moon walk in a way he would always remember. He reached for an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

"I chugged that bad boy down when he first stepped onto the moon," Cavanaugh said. "To this day, a Coke always reminds me of that day."

Up, up and away 

The whole family crowded around the console TV in their Westbury home.

And it was a crowd: Mom, Dad, six boys and two girls. The kids sat as close to the screen as they could. 

"I don't think anybody moved the whole night," said Mary Keegan, who was 15. "Everyone was amazed and awed."

After the excitement on the TV died down, Keegan got up, went outside and stared at the sky.

"I looked at the moon and thought, "There are humans on the moon,'" she said. "It was just magical."

A space junkie

David Lappin had been hooked on space since 1961, when his kindergarten class watched Alan Shepard become the first American in space.
Photos of astronauts — John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter and Gordon "Gordo" Cooper — covered his wall. Rockets and space ships were his favorite toys.

Lappin was 14 on that summer day. He flipped on the TV in his room, a 12-inch black-and-white Zenith from the Sears in Hicksville that he bought for $100 with his own money and a loan from Grandma.

The TV announcer talked about alarms going off in the module. Something about computer problems. And the spacecraft maybe running out of fuel before landing.

 None of it fazed Lappin, who now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

"This is no big deal," he recalled thinking. "This is NASA. They can do anything."

Hootin' and hollerin'

Pat McCullagh was on pins and needles. Her mind kept turning to her husband, Jack.

She was at home with their three kids in Sayville and Jack was in Houston —  at Mission Control, on the job as an instrumentation engineer at Grumman. 

Lots of their neighbors worked for Grumman, too. And virtually all of Pat's uncles were Grummanites. 

"My hopes for the project were many," said McCullagh, of the moon mission. "I feared disasters."

When the module finally touched down, relief and delight.

"I was screaming and yelling," she said. "I knew all the hard work they did."

Worth a second look

At 9, getting to stay up late to watch TV was a big deal for Neil Brogan. He knew it was a really big deal when his dad brought out his camera — and his tripod — to photograph the moon landing on TV.

He sat with his parents and his three sisters in front of the TV in their New Hyde Park home, mesmerized. 

"We were proud to be American," said Brogan, who now lives in Floral Park. "We were the first to the moon. We beat the Russians. That was OK."

The pictures that his father took of the TV screen weren't all that hot. 

"Blurry, with lines across them," he said.

A clear picture 

Pat Germinario watched the lunar landing on vacation with her parents and four siblings. 

Before the Germinario family left Smithown for their upstate getaway, Mom and Dad checked on the TV reception to make sure they could see the lunar landing. 

Germinario was 13. She remembers how excited she was all day, waiting to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon

Finally, they all crowded around the little black-and-white TV set in the screened-in porch of their bungalow. Armstrong climbled down. He planted the American flag on the moon's surface.

The specialness of those moments weren't lost on Germinario, 62, of Smithtown. 

"I knew that this was a very special night that I would remember for the rest of my life."

By Craig Schneider

craig.schneider@newsday.comScraigo

Craig Schneider is a Long Island native and Stony Brook University alumnus. He joined Newsday as a general assignment reporter in January 2018 after 20 years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.