“I sat on the roof of my parents’ car — the whole thing vibrated. It was huge,” Harvey Hubbell V said of the Apollo 11 launch to the moon in July of 1969. “It was loud, and it was beautiful.”

July 20 marks the 50th anniversary of the first time man stepped foot on the moon, and many with Newtown ties have vivid memories of watching on television, if not seeing the launch in person.

Mr Hubbell V, was a 9-year-old Newtown resident at the time he and his family drove to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to take in history first hand.

Also among those who remember the moon landing well is Mead Treadwell, 63, who grew up in Sandy Hook and now resides in Alaska. What is more, he has since established a friendship with Buzz Aldrin, who was an astronaut on the Apollo 11 trip to and walked on the moon moments after Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on it.

Mr Treadwell, 13 at the time and on vacation in Michigan with his family, remembers witnessing the moon landing on a black and white TV at about 10 pm. Although the moon landing might have been after some younger children’s bed times, Mr Treadwell pointed out that this was an experience not to be missed for any age.

“I can’t imagine any parent telling their kid they had to go to bed rather than watch the moon landing,” Mr Treadwell said.

Growing up in Newtown, Mr Treadwell was allowed by his parents (including his dad, Timothy Treadwell, after whom the town park is named) to miss school to watch flights to space. He has always had a strong interest in space and first met astronauts while covering an event for The Newtown Bee as a student in town.

“I was a high school student employed as a school columnist, sports reporter, and darkroom and morgue guy at The Bee. One day, the paper was invited to send a reporter to Hartford to a press event with Apollo astronauts, and I went and wrote the story,” he said.

Mr Treadwell has had an extensive career in politics, research, and business, including a stint as lieutenant governor of Alaska. In the early 1980s, Mr Treadwell was among a handful of individuals who joined a lunar-base working group of 45 scientists and astronauts, including Mr Aldrin, to help justify why President Reagan, and his successor President George H.W. Bush, should propose a return trip to the moon and establishment of a permanent base; among their reasons was to use the moon as a source for rocket fuel for further exploration.

Members of that group, including Mr Treadwell, stood with all the Apollo Astronauts when President George H.W. Bush announced US moon-return plans on July 20, 1989. Unfortunately, he said, the plans have taken longer than expected to be implemented.

Mr Treadwell, a member of the Explorer’s Club along with Mr Aldrin, rehashed a story that Mr Aldrin told this past March about the mission, at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner in New York City. “Houston, we have a problem,” may be linked to Apollo 13; but Mr Aldrin shared his own experience with reporting a problem back to earth on his mission when he found a piece of the circuit breaker on the floor of the spacecraft that was needed to power up the engine to get the astronauts back from the moon, Mr Treadwell said.

“They were in danger and almost didn’t come back. We didn’t know that at the time we were watching it,” Mr Treadwell said.

Commander Armstrong, who died in 2012, and lunar module pilot Aldrin were the first to set foot on the moon and were part of a three-astronaut team, along with Michael Collins, on the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

“They were three people at the tip of the spear whose lives were at risk,” said Mr Treadwell, adding that others following Apollo 11 were also in danger.

Early trips to the moon before and after the 1969 landing brought about the first full images of earth.

“That big blue marble in the middle of the void of space had a big impact not only on our interest in space travel, but also in protecting planet earth. It was a big boost to the environmental movement, Mr Treadwell said. “I think it changed our consciousness about the planet.”

On Hand For The Launch

In the July 25, 1969, edition of The Newtown Bee, a front page narrative highlights a unique visit to the launch. “Mr and Mrs Harvey Hubbell 4th of West Street and two of their children, Gayle and Harvey 5th, were guests of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the launch of Apollo 11. The office of Congressman Lowell Weicker of Connecticut arranged the trip,” the article begins.

The article continues: “The crew has now boarded and the drama of an uninterrupted count-down continues. Ignition; the familiar billow of flame. Incredibly, man’s largest finely-controlled explosion has occurred. Slowly the lift off of a 36-story object. Almost in defiance of reason and a snub to the law of gravity, a slight but perceptible pitch is programmed to protect the launch tower from the growing inferno. The vehicle now starting its climb even faster and straight up, weighs 800- tons more than a Navy destroyer. The man-made earthquake and ruffle blanket sound hit at once. The sound is like a large artillery gunfire.

“Gayle, on the roof of the station wagon, watching through binoculars, suddenly clutched the luggage rack. Faster Apollo climbs, rushing past the still-rising sun, even the mammoth fire grows dim as our astronauts are sped to maximum ‘G’ force. Now the quiet is deafening. We share a child’s reaction to the finale of any fireworks show — do it again, more, more — then you realize the men in our rocket are going to do incredible things. Science will be served as we learn more about our earth and our universe because of our ability to reach and use the moon. History has been made and inscribed on the ten-foot high landing half of Eagle remaining perched upright upon the moon is this inscription, ‘Here men from Planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July, 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.’ Until last week President Kennedy’s pledge to land men on the moon in this decade sounded visionary. But immediately when that objective was reached we find that the view from that horizon beckons us still to further and greater horizons.”

“A lot of technology came out of the space age,” said Mr Hubbell V, who now resides in Litchfield, adding that this includes everything from Tang and Velcro to communication satellites and GPS systems.

(The interest in science is part of the Hubbell heritage. Hubbell Incorporated, which designs and produces electrical and electronic products, was founded by Harvey Hubbell. Mr Hubbell V said his great-grandfather invented, among many other things, wall sockets and pull chain sockets.)

The Hubbell family went to the launch along with family friends the Sikorskys. Igor Sikorsky, Jr, and his brother, Nickolai, who live in Farmington now, are the sons of Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the helicopter.

“It was like an earthquake and a very, very severe thunderstorm all together at the same time,” Nickolai Sikorsky, 93, recalled in a conversation this week with The Newtown Bee. “The earth trembled.”

Igor Sikorsky, Jr, 90, and whose birthday coincides with the date of man’s first moon landing, said there was such a large crowd at the launch that it took about an hour for people to get on the road and moving when leaving the Kennedy Space Center. As a matter of fact, Apollo 11 had already completed orbit around earth by the time they got going, he said.

Man walking on the moon was a big thing for Igor Sikorsky, who devoted his life to aviation, Igor Sikorsky, Jr, said.

“It was a really moving moment for my father, who was a teenager when the Wright Brothers flew. In his case, you think of a life that spanned from before man flew, and he lived to see man on the moon,” Igor Sikorsky, Jr, said of his father, who passed away three years after the moon landing.

The First Woman On The Moon?

There have been six crewed missions and a dozen astronauts to go to the moon. The US has not been back to the moon since 1972, and there has yet to be a female astronaut walk on the lunar wonder.

Katie (Winkler) Hehman, who grew up in Newtown in the 1980s and ‘90s, has always had a fascination for aircraft, space, and specifically the moon. Her dad, Howard Winkler, had a career in aviation as a corporate pilot and managed a visit to Florida for astronaut John Glenn’s launch into space in 1998.

Ms Hehman sent Mr Glenn a letter when he was in office as a United States Senator. Not only did she hear back, but Mr Glenn, a World War II fighter pilot who was the first American to orbit earth back in 1962, mailed her photos and his autograph.

Mr Winkler set his daughter up with an opportunity to meet Gene Cernan, the most recent man on the moon. She remembers spending two or three hours asking Mr Cernan questions.

Ms Hehman is now an engineer for General Electric, supporting the work on their large-scale turbines and generators, and living in Austin, Texas.

“It’s hard to imagine just what that experience must have been like. My interest in space, the moon, and astronauts is what led me into the field of engineering. As a matter of fact, I got my bachelor’s degree from Purdue University, which just so happens to be the college that both Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan attended. Purdue is called ‘the cradle of astronauts’ because 25 different astronauts have graduated from there.

“In third grade, I wanted to be the first woman on the moon,” Ms Hehman recalls.

She still holds out hope that her childhood dream might come true.

“I think that’s always going to be in the back of my mind ‘til somebody beats me to it,” she said.

And until 50 years ago, nobody had stepped foot on the moon.