We came in peace for all mankind!

Where were you on the night of July 20, 1969? It’s a question that certainly resonates with anyone born before 1960. As dates go, that late summer night half a century past ranks right up there with December 7, 1941 and November 22, 1963 in terms of defining how we think of the American narrative and our place in it. It was the night when the whole world witnessed humankind’s first steps on a celestial body beyond our planet home. It was, truly, a “giant leap for mankind.”

There are members of a New Jersey bar band who are certain to remember that night. They were playing a gig at a local club when an altercation broke out with some patrons who preferred watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, to the voiceover of Walter Cronkite, rather than listen to yet another cover band earnestly blasting its way through the Top 40. The set ended abruptly when the bar owner pulled the plug on the band and booted them out the door. That was the last time Bruce Springsteen and Steel Mill (his band at the time) ever played that venue. Barely a decade later, The Boss would be belting out blue collar rock anthems to arenas filled with rabid fans, and a few more footprints would have been added to the lunar surface. It’s funny how life works.

So…where were you on the night of July 20, 1969?

I was elbow deep in a sink full of suds and greasy plates at Leo Bevilacqua’s Colosseum Pizza Parlor in San Jose, California. It was the summer before my freshman year in college. I was listening to Credence Clearwater Revival singing “Born on the Bayou” when the restaurant juke box went silent and Leo came into the kitchen to announce, in his heavy Neapolitan brogue, “Come out and see this. It’s some fantastic (fun-TAS-tika) thing!”. There on the black and white TV set above the bar were the first grainy images of history in the making.

As vividly as I recall that moment, I have a harder time recalling the feeling associated with it. At the age of 18, I’d lived the past decade with the promise of a dead president, the dread of the Cold War, and the Disney-fueled fever dreams of “Man in Space”. And then there was Vietnam. If anything, I suppose I felt a quiet sense of fulfillment, even as I struggled — and continue to struggle — to understand what it meant. All I knew for sure at that moment was we’d done it. By God, we’d done it.

So…where were you on the night of July 20, 1969?

Starting on July 16 — 50 years since the Saturn V rocket carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins on their 240,000-mile date with destiny lifted off its Florida launch pad in an earthshaking column of fire — Meyer Sign & Advertising will be hosting a commemorative series devoted to the Apollo 11 mission: one post for each of the eight days between launch and splashdown.

Our series, entitled “Long Shot”, will look at the stories that aren’t typically included in the broader narrative of America’s triumphant “race to the Moon.” We’ll focus instead on some of the people and back stories that make this narrative even more fascinating. In the process, we hope you’ll share your thoughts and recollections on the event that continues to stand out as one of the greatest testimonies to human imagination, daring, and ingenuity in our history as a species. Not to mention a powerful argument in defense of “American exceptionalism.”

If it seems odd that a local sign company would sponsor a commemorative series on the Apollo 11 moon landing, think of it as the slightly more ambitious equivalent of hanging an American flag on your front porch for the 4th of July: a simple but heartfelt display of patriotism. There is, however, another motivation. We are in a business in which a lot of disparate skills and competencies must seamlessly combine to produce a result that is far more than the sum of its parts — which is what the moon landing was on an unimaginable scale. We hope you’ll join us in this celebration of the best of what it means to be not only an American, but a member of the human race. Apollo 11, after all, journeyed to the moon “in peace for all mankind.”

Whether or not you believe that our destiny is in the stars, we got a little closer to them on July 20, 1969. We look forward to reliving that journey…and to having you along for the ride.