Yesterday was a day I'd been waiting on for a whole year.....the 38th anniversary of a "38-year-old American standing on the surface of the moon," as Walter Cronkite described it that evening. I remember it so clearly, so vividly, so wistfully now after all these years.

As my parents and I sat watching the TV that evening in 1969, I saw Armstrong along with almost half of the entire world as he set that first human footprint into lunar soil, and I had to step outside for a moment to look at that moon in the sky for myself. A feeling came over me that's hard to describe, but I remember it regardless. It was a feeling that maybe Columbus, or Lindberg might have had as they set foot on new land after months at sea, or in a new continent after all those long hours of flying alone across that same sea.

AWE, that's what it felt like if ever I've felt it, just plain awe at what we, at what man had just accomplished. Up on the surface of that moon, somewhere was an American astronaut possibly looking back at me and about 2 or 3 billion other human beings.

Armstrong is 76 now.........76 years old! That's astounding even now, but like all of us, he'll one day leave this world behind. Several of his fellow astronauts have already left, including Shepard, Cooper and others. How is it that we haven't returned to the moon before now? How long will it truly be before I can once again look up to another moon and know in my own mind that we have returned and hopefully forever this time.

But where were you on July 20, 1969?

Let's see. Where was I? ..... Well, I was 4 years old in '69, and pretty much oblivious, I believe, to the whole "moonwalking" extravaganza. I didn't notice it much until it was rediscovered in the late 70's by Michael Jackson!