Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [32]
From New York’s City Hall, we drove to the United Nations for a brief ceremony, and then it was on to Chicago, where we repeated a quite similar scene, the parade leading down Chicago’s famous Michigan Avenue and State Street. The crowd in Chicago was even more demonstrative and ebullient than the New Yorkers had been! Once again, confetti and streamers poured down on us like snow, covering the streets as the city went wild. It was a sight and a feeling I will never forget. I don’t think I’d ever smiled so much in my life!
The outpouring of adulation was especially heartwarming in light of the fact that our nation had experienced such tumultuous times in recent years. Few people were extolling the virtues of America on the news each evening. Racial tensions, body bags and other grotesque images of carnage in Vietnam, riots on college campuses, and antiwar demonstrations pummeled the national psyche. So when America discovered something to feel good about, our people cut loose in a big way, celebrating our achievement. It was as exhilarating as it was gratifying.
On to Los Angeles! The flight took three and a half hours, and I spent almost that entire time preparing another speech for the big night ahead. As in New York and Chicago, we were welcomed by the mayor, given the keys to the city, and treated like royalty. Making the Los Angeles trip even more exciting was the gala celebration that evening with President Nixon and about a thousand of his closest friends. My mother had passed away the year before, but in addition to Joan and our children, my father attended the Los Angeles event, as did my two sisters and other extended family members. As President Nixon presented Neil, Mike, and me with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians in our nation, all of my family members were beaming, especially my father.
Then on August 16, 1969, only six days after Neil, Mike, and I were released from quarantine, more than 300,000 people crowded downtown Houston for a parade welcoming us back home. It was a tremendously heartwarming experience to receive the applause and smiles from our hometown crowd. Later that evening, 45,000 people packed the Astrodome for an event hosted by Frank Sinatra to celebrate our accomplishment. All three of us were on stage with Frank as he sang “Fly Me to the Moon.” I had been a fan of Frank Sinatra since junior high school, so for Frank to be honoring us was indeed something special.
Another marvelous celebration took place a few weeks later, when my hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, pulled out all the stops to honor me with a parade and banquet. It actually rained on my parade as Joan and I rode through town in a convertible, but the drizzle didn’t dampen my spirits a bit. One of the highlights that I would cherish all my life took place when the longtime U.S. senator from New Jersey, Albert W. Hawkes, told the banquet crowd, “In all my years as a senator, in all the many votes and suggestions I have made, I shall remember that, to me, the most significant decision I made was to nominate a young man from Montclair, New Jersey, as a cadet at West Point. His accomplishments exceeded my wildest dreams.”
IF MY HOMECOMING in Montclair was a dream come true, the next big event on our schedule was the nightmare every public speaker dreads. On Tuesday, September 16, 1969, we traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak at a joint session of Congress. It was simultaneously one of the greatest privileges and one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. By now I’d given dozens of speeches, and had stood in front of huge crowds of cheering well-wishers, so it wasn’t stage fright that caused my apprehension, but the majesty of it all, standing in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Vice President and members of both the House and the Senate