A surge of national pride while watching fuzzy images on TV

In the spring of 1961, President John F. Kennedy pledged to Congress that America would work toward "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the decade. In many ways, Kennedy said, space travel "may hold the key to our future on Earth."

Although Kennedy would never live to see it, NASA fulfilled that pledge on July 20, 1969, with just five months to spare before the new decade dawned.

Apollo 11's landing on the moon reversed a 12-year-old inferiority complex that started with the Soviet Union launching the first man-made object to orbit Earth in 1957.

The Apollo 11 team of Neil Alden Armstrong, command module pilot Michael Collins and lunar module pilot Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., began its eight-day journey to the moon and back on July 16. Armstrong was first to set foot on the lunar surface, followed by Aldrin, while Collins flew the command module above.

Joyce Kinney of Port Washington was so enthralled by the summer's space race that in June she named her newborn son Glenn, after the astronaut John Glenn. On July 20, she was nursing Glenn and watching her black-and-white television when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and pronounced, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

The accomplishment was a special point of pride for Long Islanders because the Eagle, the lunar module that landed on the moon, was designed and assembled by the Grumman Aerospace Corp. of Beth-page, then Long Island's largest corporate employer.

Louis Gregoire of Northport, who was 18, attended a "moon party" with a bunch of other teenagers, including several whose fathers worked for Grumman. Watching the grainy images of Armstrong landing on a black-and-white TV, the Grumman kids beamed. "And all of us cheered. A man on the moon! We couldn't believe that."

While munching on pretzels, Gregoire met a pretty girl named Eva. This summer, they will celebrate 40 years together.

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