A generation of Americans remembers precisely what they were doing when President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Chances are the same group can tell you where they were 25 years ago today.
Most were glued to their television sets, watching with awe and pride as Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon.
Kennedy had challenged Americans eight years earlier to put a man on the moon before the decade was out, and the nation had delivered.
It was an incredible feat of scientific and technological expertise, human courage and national will. It was something upon which to build future space exploration and limitless accomplishments. For years, it has been the standard by which all other national endeavors were measured. If we could put a man on the moon, goes the refrain, why can’t we. . . fill in the blank: end poverty and hunger? rebuild our cities? find a cure for cancer?
But the collective spirit that soared that summer day in 1969, along with the Apollo 11 lunar module named Eagle, did not last. Once the goal had been reached, once mankind realized it was capable of breaking its earthly bonds, the will to be daring, bold and visionary began to fade.
Today, although there still are oceans to explore and other planetary systems to find, Americans appear increasingly timorous, cynical and fragmented. Any remaining spirit of adventure, any urge to conquer new frontiers seems to be overwhelmed by narrow self-interests or compromised by self-content.
Some historians and other observers argue it had to be thus. The circumstances that led to Kennedy’s challenge and the ultimate success of the Apollo space program, they contend, were unique. All the conditions were right for the nation to focus on a well-defined goal and attain it with pride.
By early 1961, the Soviet Union had launched a space satellite, sent a man orbiting the Earth and appeared to be winning the Cold War race to control space. Scientists told Kennedy, however, that the United States had a chance of beating the Soviets to the moon, and Congress gave him the money to try.
Before the Eagle landed and Armstrong could take his “small step for man,” however, Kennedy was killed. In addition, America became mired in a war in Vietnam, violent struggles over civil rights and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The nation needed something to restore its self-confidence, and Apollo 11 provided the lift.
To be sure, Kennedy’s decision was a political one, driven as much by fear of the Soviet threat as anything else. But, even in retrospect, that doesn’t diminish the magnitude of the achievement. It may be that Americans will never again be able to agree on such a clearly defined goal and have the technological and financial means to achieve it.
But what needs to be remembered, and recaptured, on this anniversary is the spirit of Apollo 11-a spirit that, if only for a brief time, inspired the entire nation to think big, reach for impossible goals and strive for solutions to intractable problems.
