Guest Columnist
I recently read Robert Kurson's best –seller "Rocket Men" about the historic journey of Apollo 8 to the moon. The mission occurred just before the end of 1968, which was such a tumultuous year in our nation's history. In fact, some believe that the success of Apollo 8 "saved 1968" from an otherwise disaster. It got me to thinking where I was and what was happening that year.
In April 1968, I turned 20. I was finishing my second year at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). That summer, one of my two training periods was occupied with attending basic paratrooper training at Fort Benning, Ga. After a couple of weeks of training in the hot Georgia sun, five jumps earned me a set of wings.
That fall, I began my third year at USAFA and double-overloaded my course schedule in a vain attempt (subsequently proved unsuccessful) to earn a coveted graduate studies slot to the UCLA School of Business and Economics. More enjoyable was a Santa Fe train trip to Chicago in early October to watch Air Force football take on the Naval Academy at Soldier's Field. We won.
The Vietnam War colored so much of the torturous 1968. At the end of January, the Tet Offensive began and swayed public opinion against support for the war. Many judged that the stories told by the Johnson Administration and military commanders were optimistic thinking at best and perhaps fiction. It was not long after Tet ended that President Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election – the war had literally forced him from office.
1968 was the bloodiest year of the long (1959-1975) Vietnam War. More than 16,000 Americans died and this spike was matched by Vietnamese deaths also. No longer would the policy be "how can we be successful," but instead, "how can we get out of this mess." The overtones of the war colored everything that happened in 1968.
Two high profile political assassinations shocked the nation and the world. In early April, Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis where he had come to support a garbage workers strike. Two months later, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was shot to death (like his older brother, the president) following victory in the California primary election. I think I was more affected by King's murder than RFK's, but believed there was a good chance that Kennedy would be elected president that fall, given his momentum.
In August, the Democrats met in Chicago to select their candidate for the presidency and were met by a full-scale riot of protest. Anger over the war was pinned on the Democrats who had held the White House for eight years. Most of the protesters were students who were upset over the effect of the draft on their young lives. Mayor Richard Daley turned his police force loose on the protesters and riot ensued. The images on television were both shocking and seared into our nation's political history. Ultimately, they would help undermine the candidacy of Vice President Humbert Humphrey.
Two months later, I was in Chicago for a football game and witnessed the security provided to us as we marched from the same hotel north on Michigan Av., over a bridge into Grant Park, and then south toward the famous stadium. Mayor Daley was taking no chances on a repeat ‘black eye' for his city. It was about that time at the Olympics in Mexico City when two athletes gave the first Black Power salute as they stood on the medals platform while our national anthem was being played. Shades of today.
Against this backdrop, NASA decided to make the boldest of gambles by sending the Apollo command module and its three-man crew on a six-day journey to the moon. They had only four months to plan an incredibly complex, risky mission. Equipment delays after the Apollo 1 fire and President Kennedy's challenge seven years earlier to "land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the decade" forced NASA's hand.
Three astronauts would ride atop the mighty Saturn 5 rocket, the most powerful machine ever designed by man still, for the first time (the first two shots were unmanned tests, the second of which was a near disaster) off Cape Canaveral's Pad 39A into orbit and then, toward the moon, a quarter million miles away into deep space. There they would enter into lunar orbit, make ten revolutions, and then on the far side away from communication, fire their SPS rocket to accelerate out of orbit back toward earth, re-entering earth's thick atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour. It worked like a charm, paving the way for two additional practices in early 1969 and Apollo 11's landing in July. Mission accomplished.
What a remarkable end to an otherwise tumultuous year.