Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [31]
Now those words seemed to describe my own inner turmoil as I thought about the days ahead.
NASA RATHER EXPECTED a media circus from the moment we landed, and the three weeks in the quarantine unit did little to quench the public’s thirst for information about our journey, or the uncontrollable intrusions of the press into our private lives. Neil, Mike, and I left the quarantine facilities on Sunday, August 10, 1969, around 9:00 p.m., pronounced fit to go by the doctors there. Excited to see our families, with whom we had hardly even talked in more than a month, the three of us said hasty good-byes and piled into three separate NASA staff cars for the drive home to Nassau Bay, a short distance from the space center complex. Our cars had barely pulled away from the gate when a television crew nudged in behind us. My driver roared away from headquarters with the TV crew following closely behind us, careening wildly, trying to get a better camera angle. The race was on. It was no better when I arrived home, where a bevy of reporters and photographers were waiting in the dark on my front lawn. I pressed through the crowd to my waiting family inside the house. My wife, Joan, and our three children—Mike, thirteen; Jan, twelve; and Andy, eleven—all threw their arms around me and welcomed me home. Somehow, we all knew our lives would never be the same again.
OF COURSE, BEING first on the moon had its advantages. We were informed before leaving the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston that on Wednesday, August 13, 1969, the three Apollo 11 astronauts and our families would be going to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles all in one day, to enjoy ticker tape parades and the accolades and appreciation of the American people. What an honor that was sure to be!
Joan and I had difficulty convincing our children of that distinguished honor as we tried to rouse them out of bed shortly after three in the morning to board our flight from Houston to New York at 5:00 a.m. But what a day it was!
Our means of transportation for the day was one of the presidential planes, Air Force II, whisking us first to New York, where we were met by Mayor John Lindsay and his wife. The streets were lined with thousands of people as our motorcade made its way slowly up Wall Street to Broadway. What seemed like an avalanche of confetti poured from the windows and decks of the buildings as the enormous crowd embraced us with an unbelievable outpouring of appreciation. For a while the skies above us literally turned white with all the confetti and ticker tape as we waved to the people in the streets. Hands reached out to touch us, many people tried to shake our hands, but our security guards warned us about trying to shake hands with those we passed by. We could easily have been pulled right out of the car and mobbed by well-wishers.
In front of us marched a troop of Boy Scouts, each one carrying an American flag. As I saw those young people marching, and the response of the crowd all around us, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a flood of patriotism unlike anything I had ever before experienced. Not at West Point, not in Korea as an American fighter pilot, not even when I first donned the spacesuit with the American flag on the left shoulder. But seeing those young Scouts and hearing the cheers of the people, not just for us, but for all of those who had worked so hard to get us to the moon and back, evoked a powerful response in me. I wanted to say to the American people, “Don’t thank me; let me thank you!”
The parade lasted more than an hour, ending up