[ COMMEMORATIVE EDITION ]
"I was a student at McKinley High School and working part-time as a 'bag boy' at Gem's grocery department. I finished work that night and as I walked out into the evening air, I looked up at the moon and remember being in awe realizing that we were there. They say that with technology, the world is getting smaller. Well, on that evening, I felt the heavens came close enough to touch." Roy Takumi,
Pearl City
Big-city girl ON JULY 16, 1969, I was sitting on the bed in a room at the old Hale Nani, a small hotel at Poipu Landing. Unknown to me at the time was the fact that the hotel was believed to be haunted by Hawaiian spirits that swung the chandeliers, slammed doors and appeared in hallways. There were almost no other guests at the hotel, so it was eerily quiet. I sat alone, watching the Apollo 11 blast off on a small TV in my room, while my fiance, Bruce Michiels, was off to work.
watched the moon
landing, sitting in
a haunted hotel
in rural Kauai
Her fiance was tracking
Apollo 11 at Kokee, some
32 years agoAlannah Farrell
We had just recently arrived from Boston, where I had a nifty apartment on Newbury Street and was living an urban, city-girl lifestyle. Now, sitting alone in this "haunted hotel," in a rural setting on Kauai, knowing no one on the island and thousands of miles from home, I might as well have been on the moon myself!
Bruce had been hired just weeks before as the technical coordinator for the Tracking Station in Kokee, then run by Kentron. Among his responsibilities was scheduling all the shifts for the tracking of the Apollo mission from that site. He pretty much stayed up in Kokee around the clock during those critical days.
When he finally got off work, he would drive down the canyon roads in the loaner car, a huge gray American station wagon with "Property of the U.S. Government" stenciled on the doors in large black letters. He'd come and pick me up at the hotel, and we would go out and explore Kauai. We made a very incongruous sight, I suspect -- the young haole couple with '60s long hair and wire-rim glasses, dressed in newly acquired Tahiti Imports psychedelic aloha attire, driving all over the back roads of Kauai in the official government vehicle!
We drove around the island repeatedly during that moon mission and literally fell in love with the scenery, the people, the food, the lifestyle.
Eventually we found a place to live, made friends, got married and had a son. I taught high school; Bruce left Kentron and bought a health food store. Kauai became our home. And although now, sadly, both my husband and my son have passed away, and I have long since moved on to Oahu and changed my name.
I still recall vividly that time, that place and those surreal days during the mission. Basically, the Apollo 11 brought us to Kauai and started a chain of events in my life that has kept me here in Hawaii all these years. It was a very big and exciting step for us back then. I still have the newspapers here somewhere, too!
[ MOON LANDING ]
Fresh out of high school in Southern California, I spent July 20, 1969, at Malibu riding the awesome 6- to 8-foot south-swell surf past dark rather than watching the black-and-white TV moon show. I looked at the moon that evening as I was leaving, and remember thinking that those guys on the moon have no clue what they were missing and that I'd remember that day as clearly as the day J.F.K. was shot. Young surfer was stoked by the waves
Douglas Fessler, Pearl City When the first American walked on the moon, I was in a bank in Bangkok, cashing a check. There was a TV on the counter nearest me, and all of the Thai employees were watching the greatest thing that ever happened to America. I never felt prouder to be an American. American in Bangkok felt proud
Glenda Chung Hinchey, Honolulu I was in Vietnam at the U.S. Marine combined action group headquarters compound on the beach at Danang. There was no enemy activity that night, and except for the interior guard, we were all able to watch the landing on the TV in the club. We had doubts, because we knew we were withdrawing from Vietnam, but this feat bolstered our morale and made us proud to be Americans! Landing gave Marines in Vietnam a lift
Sam Moyer, Kailua