theBoomeroom

With my Revell model kit of the Apollo 11 Command Module, Service module and Lunar Lander in hand, I gingerly opened the cellophane wrapper that possibly changed my life forever.

Meticulously opening the box, I saw a bunch of white styrene pieces attached to white styrene tubes. Yelling back at my mom I said ” It’s in a million pieces !!!!

My mom quietly said ” wait for you Dad to come home….. he’ll give you a hand”.

What, wait until suppertime. No way!!

Mulling through the semi- incoherent assembly instructions I decided I would be just like one of the NASA engineers and put the holy mess together myself!

Piece by piece, I persevered and Voila! I was ready for launch.

Everyday of the mission I would watch tv and recreate what happened that day.

I would hold the Command Module and the Lunar Module together in the docked position.

Using ants as my astronauts, I flew the spacecraft around my street daily until the day of the landing.

I glued myself to the tv with model in hand and in utter awe watched history being made!

I slowly detached the Lunar Module from the Command module and made my decent to the orange shag carpet lunar surface. (not so authentic but it did fine).

The Eagle had landed!

One small step for man….. one giant leap for Jeff.(err Mankind).

That event, as I try to recount to my children, was probably the most memorable time of my life.

My interests in Science, Engineering, Design, and teamwork all stem from that time in history.

I am grateful to have been there and grateful to be alive to recount this story to all  who read this blog.

It seems like just yesterday!

Jeff Pevzner