Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [79]
It was an amazing evening. The excitement in the air was almost palpable as twelve hundred people sat around banquet tables in the Shoreham ballroom. Although familiar big-band music played in the background, everyone sensed that this would be unlike any other event they had ever attended. Something special was about to happen.
When the house lights dimmed, a two-tiered dais was illuminated on the platform at the front of the huge hall. For the next twenty-five minutes, CBS television network vice president Thomas J. Swafford and entertainer Johnny Grant introduced a most unusual assortment of dignitaries. The fifty-two people included Arkansas congressman Wilbur D. Mills; entertainer Dick Van Dyke; Garry Moore, best known as the host of the popular What’s My Line? television show; Robert Young, known to millions as television’s Marcus Welby, M.D.; Sylvester J. Tinker, the chief of the Osage Indian Nation; as well as an airline captain, several sports stars, Broadway and recording stars, a surgeon, various Hollywood movie and television stars, a member of Great Britain’s House of Lords, prominent leaders from the spheres of business, religion, labor, journalism, the armed forces, and, of course, me. Each person on the dais was greeted with tremendous applause.
When the last person was introduced, Thomas Swafford announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are recovered alcoholics.”
The room exploded with even more thunderous applause as the audience rose to its feet in one motion. This was the first time in history that such a large group of public figures had identified themselves as alcoholics. Of course, prior to that event, rumors had swirled for years about certain individuals in the room, but now here we were, admitting to the world that we needed help to win the battle of the bottle. In his remarks, NCA’s president, John MacIver, said, “I am more than a little awed. It is given to very few of us to be present at one of those moments when you know history is being made. This event will do more to reduce alcoholism’s stigma than anything ever attempted. This is a historic occasion. It should dispel once and for all that alcoholism does not happen to nice people.”
The intense emotion we felt in the room all evening long reached a peak when recovering alcoholics in the audience were invited to join those on the platform. Hundreds of men and women rose, as those of us on the platform gave them a standing ovation.
Afterwards, in an impromptu news conference, I told the media how I had begun drinking more heavily during my bouts of depression. “Some people may look down their noses at an astronaut who admits he has suffered from depression or alcoholism,” I said, “but there are benefits and good feelings derived from standing up and being counted.” I talked briefly about how astronauts were often thought of as “supermen” by the public, and that NASA did its best to support that image. “No career field is immune from alcoholism,” I emphasized, much to the chagrin of some of my former colleagues in the military and in the space program.
Operation Understanding was a signature event. More than thirty years later, Robert J. Lindsey, president of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, recalled it as a milestone in American history. “Without question, Operation Understanding was the most critically important public event in our field to reduce the public stigma and misunderstanding of the disease of alcoholism that stands in the way of people seeking help.”12
With pleasant memories of Operation Understanding still running through my mind, a few days later, on May 14, Return to Earth aired and garnered strong ratings. Millions of people watched the movie and empathized with Cliff Robertson’s portrayal of me. Suddenly I was famous again—this time for completely different reasons. Many people were favorably impressed that an astronaut would admit to his personal struggle with