Fifty Years On: Remembering July 1969

Apollo 11 mission insignia. I was six years old when American astronauts landed on the Moon half a century ago. 

Earlier this week, I watched director Todd Douglas Miller's 2019 documentary Apollo 11, a 93-minute "direct cinema" account of the first Apollo Project manned mission to land on the Moon. I thought it was a good way to begin commemorating the 50th Anniversary of one of the most significant human achievements in history, even though in some ways it left me feeling more than a little sad.

Fifty years ago today, Apollo 11 was still four days away from its liftoff. American astronauts had orbited the Moon twice already by then; Apollo 8 was the first manned flight to orbit the Moon in December of 1968, while Apollo 10 (May 18-26, 1969) was a dress rehearsal in which the Command Service Module and the Lunar Module flew with three astronauts in the F mission that tested the equipment and maneuvers necessary for a successful lunar landing. But the G mission (the actual landing itself) was still days away on July 12, 1969.

I still remember - though the details are a bit hazy - the feeling of anticipation most people felt at the time before Apollo 11 left Earth on Wednesday, July 16, 1969. Even in Colombia, where I was living in a large apartment in Bogota along with my mom and my older half-sister, the mission was on everyone's minds and all over Colombian media. Most of my family, especially my U.S.-educated maternal grandfather, was quietly supportive, although some of my cousins, especially those who were in their 20s and 30s, were highly critical. I remember the common theme in their opposition was "It's such a waste of money. With so much poverty here, why doesn't the United States spend it on the poor rather than on a space mission to the Moon?"

To my chagrin, my older half-sister tended to echo these sentiments whenever the topic of Project Apollo came up in conversations. She had recently graduated from a Catholic all-girls' high school in West Virginia and had rejoined our little core family after four years of being away, so I was just getting to know her. At age six, I adored her, but I found her lack of enthusiasm for the Apollo mission to be disconcerting, especially since Mom and Abuelito Quique (my grandpa) were all for it.

I think, in all honesty, that these vivid memories of July 1969 are bittersweet because they remind of my now-dead parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncle. They were still alive during this exciting time in history, as was my cousin Mauricio Restrepo Martinez, who died only a few years after due to heart disease while he was still in his 20s.

It also saddens me to see, in retrospect, that there was always a wide divide between my older half-sister and me. The almost 13-year difference in ages was a factor; she was already a young adult while I was six and just starting first grade at Colegio El Nogal, a private co-ed Catholic school whose owner/principal was a friend of the family's.  I idolized my sister (for that's how I used to think of her), but even then I found myself getting annoyed with her anti-Americanism and her disdain for anything the U.S. did.

Me? School was out, and I loved being on vacation. I was also excited about the Apollo 11 mission and read every newspaper article and watched every newscast that covered the preparations for the historic occasion.