Lunar landing: Joan Kelly

Joan Kelly, 78, of Cutchogue. Widow of Thomas J. Kelly, the Grumman Corp. engineer and propulsion expert known as father of the moon lander. They raised six children together during the development of the lunar module.

We all loved the (space) program. We thought it was the best thing that was happening. It gave the kids a lot of energy and they knew a lot about it. . . . The first time we were down in Florida [for an Apollo launch] people would be talking about it and the boys would go over and set them straight on the details.

Tom's idea was the moon and beyond. . . . He felt we could not possibly be alone . He wanted to help us learn and take steps to understand the sky. Everyone who worked on this really wanted it to go, wanted to see the moon and have these guys up there. . . . It was literally a sea-to-shining- sea kind of thing. There were people working literally all over the country, from Long Island to Colorado, all of these places were putting things together, just as we were.

Getting the LM ready, those were very hard years. . . . Tom worked these long hours and he had a cot in his office where he sometimes slept. . . . It was a lot of hard work for a lot of people - hard work for the men and women who worked on it, and hard work for those of us at home.

People would say to me, it (the moon lander) looks like a spider. . . . You know, everybody says something about ''that dinky little thing'' . . . but we absolutely thought it was one of the most beautiful things on this Earth. Because it did its job every time, flawlessly.