30 YEARS LATER, IT'S STILL...AMAZING! MOON LANDING LEFT INDELIBLE MEMORIES.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

A dream as old as mankind itself was realized 30 years ago Tuesday: A man set foot on the moon.

The world watched with rapt attention as astronaut Neil Armstrong gingerly hopped onto the lunar surface at 7:56 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Sunday, July 20, 1969.

And folks were just as mesmerized in and around the San Fernando Valley, home of so many of the aerospace companies that participated in the effort.

``My whole family was glued to the TV set,'' said Nancy Oliva Harrell of Winnetka, who was 12 at the time. ``I remember my grandmother always saying she wanted to see a man walk on the moon. She died a few months later.''

Teresa Quigley of Reseda said she was working the night shift at a local hospital.

``The only sounds were the sounds of television sets. I have never heard a ward of patients so quiet, not even at night,'' she said. ``I also remember looking out onto Ventura Boulevard, and it was deserted.

``When the landing actually occurred, I felt many emotions - pride in the accomplishment, relief that they had landed safely, curiosity in what they would find and concern about the trip back.''

Kathie Ewing of Simi Valley, who was a teen-ager working at Taco Bell, agreed that everything stopped for the moon walk.

``One of my co-workers brought in a portable TV, and I sat on a sack of pinto beans and watched Neil Armstrong make history,'' Ewing said. ``We didn't have any business for about 45 minutes.''

Even some of the scientists and engineers who made the trip possible watched in awe and disbelief.

``I was at home, glued to the TV, watching all that took place,'' said Ray Kuhlow of Reseda, who had worked on liquid-fuel rocket engines at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park for six years leading to the Apollo launch. ``What a great day for America.''

Viewers were tense and anxious, both for the astronauts' safety and the success of their mission, because during most of the space race, America had been running in second place.

So far, the Soviets had beaten the United States at everything: They launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in space; had the first man in space; the first space walk; the first woman in space. They had a 25-hour space flight when the longest the Americans could muster was 16 minutes. They were first to have two capsules in space simultaneously and maneuvered them within six kilometers of each other. They were first to send three men into space at the same time.

Even worse, three American astronauts died in a space capsule fire in 1967. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed sitting atop Apollo 1, and the disaster set back America's moon efforts 20 months.

The entire industrial, technological and intellectual might of the United States redoubled its efforts. And none of the setbacks seemed to matter on July 20, 1969, when the spidery form of the lunar lander touched down on the moon at 1:17 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

``Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,'' Neil Armstrong reported to Mission Control. Sensors showed his heart rate had gone from a normal 77 beats per minute to 156.

Pulses were pounding back on Earth, as well.

Betty Glaser of Sherman Oaks was with a friend giving birth to her first son.

``I was so completely wrapped up in the lunar landing that when I got the news of her baby's arrival, it seemed to take a back seat to what I was witnessing on the TV,'' she said.

The job was done.

Many Americans exulted in the landing as a triumph for the United States, a fourth-quarter, come-from-behind win over our Cold War archrival, the Soviet Union.

However, many inside and outside the U.S. saw it not as an American victory, but one for all humanity, based on the exultation in streets from Moscow to Peking, from Calcutta to Caracas.

As the plaque Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left on the moon read: ``Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.''

Watching man on `another world'

Michael Pucher of Reseda was a 13-year-old science buff who had grown up with the space program during that moon summer.

``Boy, was I excited,'' he said. ``This was it. We finally were going to the moon.''

He remembered the previous Christmas, when Apollo 8 was the first to orbit the moon, ``going into my back yard and looking at the moon - man, there's people going around that thing.''

The Sunday that Armstrong and Aldrin were supposed to land on the moon, Pucher and his father watched their RCA color TV in the family living room in Reseda. He said his mother interrupted them just as the lunar lander was about to reach the moon, to see if her boys wanted lunch.

``We were screaming at her, get away from the TV!'' Pucher said. ``She wasn't into it at all.''

The craft landed safely, and Pucher said he watched as a usually stoic Walter Cronkite removed his glasses and wiped away tears of relief.

``Back then Walter Cronkite was Mr. News, and to actually see him cry - wow, that was powerful,'' he said.

But then the interval between when they landed and when they first stepped onto the moon was excruciating. ``It was longer than waiting for Christmas.''

Then Armstrong and Aldrin kicked up some dust. Dust that was billions of years old.

``It was so engrossing. To see an actual human being walking on the moon - incredible,'' said Pucher, a chemist with Banner-Pharmacaps in Chatsworth.

``It was such a momentous event,'' he said. ``Even when we walk on Mars, it will never be the same. This was the first time man had stepped on another world.

``It's really a shame we don't have such strong national goals,'' Pucher said. ``This gave everyone such a strong sense of national pride. It made you feel good to be an American.''

Finding a TV in Yugoslavia

Edwin Bernard of Sylmar had just graduated from the University of Liverpool and was on a cross-country trip from England to India. On July 20, he and his 500 traveling companions found themselves in communist Yugoslavia, pitching tents on the campus of Zagreb University.

Bernard and six others knew the landing was imminent, so they searched out a dormitory on campus and squeezed into the common room, where about 100 students were watching television. Some gave up their seats for the foreigners.

``The atmosphere was supercharged with anticipation and excitement,'' he said. ``We were in awe. We were looking at history.''

And the room erupted when Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

``They were cheering. It was interesting for us to observe their enthusiasm at the American achievement,'' Bernard said. ``We all cheered enthusiastically and hugged and shook each others' hands, and not an American in sight.

``It was like you were supporting somebody and they won the Super Bowl or the Olympics. It was overwhelming.''

He compared the spectacle of the moon walk to when he and his companions saw the Taj Mahal for the first time, later in that trip.

``When we actually saw it, it exceeded everything we had ever imagined. Seeing the detail of the moon, of them bouncing around,'' Bernard, 62, said. It was ``a memory we would savor for the rest of our lives.''

Memories bring chills

Diana Jane Riggs of Sylmar was a 17-year-old nurse's aide at Mountain View Sanitarium in Sylmar.

That night she had tended to many patients and was helping them get to bed.

She was with one of her favorites, Emma Anderson, a Sylmar pioneer, when Armstrong began his momentous walk on the moon.

``It was really something. Then Emma said, `You know I came across the United States in a covered wagon, and I'm watching them landing on the moon,' '' she said. ``I still get chills when I think of this.''

Source of pride

Ken Prescott of Palmdale was a 19-year-old GI recovering from an illness at an Army hospital in Danang, Vietnam. He said he doesn't remember the week prior to the moon landing but awoke and saw events unfolding on the television in his ward.

``It was kind of surrealistic, actually,'' said Prescott, who now works for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. ``I remember feeling very, very proud and thinking also I was kind of a part of it, by being in the military.''

That feeling didn't last, though. When he returned to the United States shortly thereafter, he said he was cursed and spat upon for having served in Vietnam.

But back in that hospital, the 240,000-mile gulf between Vietnam and the Sea of Tranquility, between the country's two most serious endeavors at that time, was bridged by those fuzzy, historic television images.

``The spectacle was overwhelming,'' he said, and he and the other patients watched quietly. ``It was an eerie silence and a feeling of awe.

``I was 10,000 miles from home, doing what I thought was my patriotic duty. It gave me a very real sense of patriotism and pride. I was 19 years old then - the whole thing was kind of overwhelming.''

Watching in footed pajamas 

Timothy Belfield said he wasn't much interested in the moon shot. As a 7-year-old in Woodland Hills, his toy cars were much more interesting.

``The launch and everything, I was pretty much oblivious to all of it,'' he said. ``The moment of truth was when those black and white images came on, and it was, oh my God, I don't care what toy he wants to play with.''

When Armstrong was about to step onto the lunar surface, he said his parents dragged him away from his Hot Wheels and set him in front of the television.

He stood five feet from the screen, transfixed in his footed pajamas.

``It seemed like it was something important,'' he said.

``I remember my father explaining it to me, this is a spaceship that is sitting on the moon, and this is the first time we've ever landed on the moon,'' said Belfield, who now works as a truck driver. ``To me it was like a whirlwind of information. It was a little startling. It wasn't a concept I had really imagined.''

The newscaster cut in, and Belfield used the pause to dash to his room and fetch his Instamatic camera.

He returned, and when Armstrong took his ``one small step,'' Belfield snapped a picture of the television.

The moon walk fired his imagination, he said, and he began drawing maps of lunar voyages and collecting stamps and pictures and newspaper articles about space missions that his mother cut out.

He said space travel still fascinates him, and he clips articles about shuttle missions and the new international space station for his scrapbook. And with them all is a fuzzy photo from an Instamatic camera, shot 30 years ago.

``The image has faded over the years,'' he said, ``but I can still see it, in my mind.''

Nervous with the rest of the world

Joseph Miller of Tarzana was in Houston, watching the moon landing closer than most people. He was chief development engineer for the lunar module's descent engine, built by Space Technology Laboratories in Redondo Beach, which later became TRW.

``It was a lot like a war. We were committed, the country was committed,'' said Miller, 62. ``If it took more money or it took more time, it was there.''

Sitting in a room with 80 other engineers, watching data as it came in from the spacecraft and trying to be ready for any of a million things that could happen, he said he's using polite understatement to describe his feelings by saying ``my stomach was churning.''

Then the lunar module touched down safely, and he and his team could relax. But thousands of engineers involved in the rest of the mission still had plenty to worry about.

``We were now free to enjoy it and now free to take glee in it. By God, they were on the moon,'' he said. ``I think I was like the whole rest of the world and thinking enormous pride in what the whole human race was doing at that point.''

Of any scientific advancements since the moon landing, Miller said, ``they may be more significant, but they're not more dramatic and they're not more uplifting. They're not more representative of what the human animal is capable of.''

And of all the experiments and scientific advancements the Apollo astronauts were responsible for, he thinks the most important was simply photographing the Earth from the moon - an image for all the world to see and reflect upon.

``It really drove home what a fragile and self-contained planet we live on,'' he said.

`Witnesses to history'

Bob and Jan Livingston of Northridge were newly married high school teachers on a camping trip in the Northeast back then.

They reached Averill Harriman State Park in upstate New York just ahead of a torrential rainstorm, and holed up in their camper, listening on the radio to the astronauts' progress. The wished they were home in their Northridge living room with their 25-inch color TV.

``Then we noticed people - a few at first, then many - rain-soaked adults and children, flashlights in hand, walking determinedly toward a cleared area,'' Jan Livingston said.

Curious, the couple left the refuge of their camper to follow. Someone had a 17-inch black-and-white TV under a tarp, with an extension cord leading to a laundry room.

``There we stood in the downpour, along with 150 other people, craning our necks and holding our breath,'' she said. When Armstrong stepped onto the moon, ``all of us leaped and splashed simultaneously in the rain. A spontaneous cheer went up, and we clapped wildly to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

``We had been witnesses to history, and we knew it.''

A tiny image

Larry Bremmer was a month past graduation from John Burroughs High School in Burbank, where he said it seemed everyone was, or knew someone who was, working at Lockheed or elsewhere in aerospace or defense. He said that helped fuel his interest in the space program.

But apparently his parents didn't share that fascination.

``I waited with eager anticipation for Neil Armstrong to come out of the Eagle and step out onto the moon,'' he said. ``I just couldn't sit still.

``But when the big moment came, I had to watch it on a 9-inch black-and-white TV in my parents' room.''

Meanwhile, he said, his parents were watching a Lakers game.

``My mom and dad didn't want to switch away from the game on their big 25-inch color TV in our living room to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon,'' he said.

``A couple of times a year I still ask my mom, Who won the game?'' Bremmer said. ``She doesn't remember. But I remember watching Neil Armstrong that night, and will for the rest of my life.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Astronaut Edwin ``Buzz'' Aldrin stops beside the U.S. flag during the Apollo 11 mission.

Photo by Neil Armstrong

(2) Mission control personnel in Houston celebrate the return to Earth of Apollo 11 on July 24, 1969. Tuesday is the 30th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon.

NASA/The New York Times

(3) From left, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin in the Apollo 11 crew portrait.

NASA/Associated Press