Dad: The Man and the Moon

My Dad was a Grumman man, through and through.

Milty Schneider loved building planes, but his favorite time was working on the lunar module.

With that spider-like spacecraft, my father touched history — much as he did when he served as an Army motar-gunner in World War II.

Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn, who grew up in an orphanage.

As America marks the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, I know my father would be singing the praises of the 9,000 Grumman workers who had a hand in building the module. It was a fantastic time for the space program, with the whole country behind it. Anything — and everything — seemed possible. 

Dad worked on the module’s circuit boards, doing some soldering. I was just a kid back then so I don’t remember much more than that.

He was a modest man, not one to go on and on about it. Yet I recall the pride he showed whenever he talked about it.

He spoke of it as a job well done, Long Island-style.

That was such a bright time in our family’s life, and Grumman was a big part of it. 

When Dad drove our blue Rambler past the Grumman plant off South Oyster Bay Road in Bethpage, all four of us — Dad, Mom, me and my brother, Howie — would do a military-style salute and sing in unison: “Saaaluuute!”

Summer meant the Grumman picnic and air show. We'd marvel at the strange-looking planes parading across the sky. Even now, I can almost taste Mom's bologna sandwiches, wrapped in little plastic bags.

Every air show ended with the Navy's Blue Angels, soaring above us with twists and turns and rolls that seemed like magic tricks in midair.

We lived a short ride from the Grumman plant on Roosevelt Avenue in North Bellmore, a block so chock full of kids that we didn’t just have teams for sponge ball, basketball and football. We had all-star teams! Kids from other streets came to play on our block.

In the summertime, I played outside until my mother turned on the porch light, which was her signal to come in.

When it was time for Dad to come home from work, my brother and I would wait for him at the end of the block. He’d stop the car, we’d get in and we’d all drive about 30 yards to the house.

Dad played outside with us a lot. I never understood why until I learned he grew up without parents. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father, already raising three kids, put my dad in the Pride of Judea orphanage and then pretty much disappeared.

Years later, Mom told me that Dad wanted to be a great father because he never had one. 

Those were days of pool parties with friends and family sitting in chairs all over the backyard, and Dad hovering over the barbecue grill waving a spatula like a wizard.

The moon landing fit in perfectly with all that happiness and hope for the future. Change was happening fast. The fights for what was right were winning. And we were living in the best place in the world.

When I was in my teens, I used to think I was so much cooler than my dad. We hollered a lot across the Generation Gap. Then I realized all he had done in his life, and that he dedicated his life to me, my brother and my mother.

Both my parents are gone now. Mom only two years ago, Dad in 2010.

At Dad's funeral, the funeral director presented my Mom with the American flag that had draped his coffin. He told her, as he told the families of all veterans, “On behalf of a grateful nation.”

Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn.

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.