Paul Walorski remembers staying up all night on July 20, 1969, with his eyes glued to the television set, watching news coverage as Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin took a giant leap for mankind.
At 4:30 a.m. the next morning, Walorski, a young college student at the time, hurried to his early morning shift as a copy-runner at the South Bend Tribune where he caught a peek of the first photos to come in from the newswires of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
“I came in and saw the stories and pictures in the South Bend copy room to get ready for the editors coming in,” Walorski said. “I got to see more than most in the pictures.”
Dubbing himself a “space freak” growing up, Walorski said he remembers sitting in his father’s basement listening to Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite that orbited the Earth for three weeks, on his dad’s shortwave radio. He would even sneak a radio into high school to listen to NASA’s space walks.
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Fifty years later, Walorski is one of many people spreading their fascination of space with younger generations. Walorski will present at the Bartholomew County Public Library on July 15 as part of the library’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 Mission.
Using his models of the Earth, sun and moon, Walorski will illustrate just how big the universe actually is from the relative sizes of the moon, sun, planets and galaxies to the distances in between.
“With the sun model I use, the solar system would expand out to Mill Race Park and Pluto expands out to Donner Park,” Walorski said. “I also use coins and other things people are familiar with to show where the solar system fits in the scheme of the Milky Way galaxy. On that same scale, I show how far away we can actually observe the universe at its furthest distance.”
His own mission in sharing this information extends beyond his love for astronomy. Walorski said the moon landing was really an “amazing technological feat.” Reflecting on the last 50 years, he said it’s interesting to know how people were willing to accept the challenge and risk their lives to accomplish the mission — something that America found important outside of the normal everyday existence.
“If there’s something people can learn from that, that’s my hope,” Walorski said.
Commander Neil Armstrong will also make a special appearance at the library on July 16 when actor Terry Lynch comes to town from Illinois to present his portrayal of the cosmic legend.
For more than 10 years, Lynch has brought history to life through one-man interactive performances of historical figures, ranging from Mark Twain to Paul Revere. He started portraying Armstrong this year as a way to commemorate the historical mission to the moon.
“I was young at the time,” Lynch said, recalling where he was the day Armstrong and Aldrin took their first steps on the moon. “It’s very cool. There’s tons of information on these guys. Let’s go with Neil.”
When Lynch presents to a room of youths, he said younger kids are able to learn more about the whole process — rocket ships, space shuttles, unknown facts.
“My whole goal is to make them believe this is actually someone involved,” Lynch said. “That’s the best part — if I can get people so involved that they want to know about the person or the subject matter and start asking questions as if I’m actually that person.”
It takes about two months of preparation to fully get into a character, Lynch said. That involves reading books, brainstorming a performance outline and locking away information in his brain so he can answer any questions the audience may have.
Lynch must also look the part if he wants to play the part. That means shopping at what he calls “unimaginable places” to find the perfect costumes. He discovered an astronaut suit at a brick and mortar costume shop that was going out of business.
What he hopes to convey most in his July 16 presentation is that Apollo 11 wasn’t just about Armstrong and Aldrin, although those are the names most everyone knows. Lynch said more than 400,000 people worked on getting a man to the moon, and even Armstrong and Aldrin made that clear.
“These guys knew they were the ones there but they didn’t get there by themselves,” Lynch said. “In reality, if you do something amazing, people will find out. These people showed that. It was a time where people really worked together. That’s the message I’d like to get across with it. Although they were the astronauts, they wanted people to know it wasn’t just them.”
Mary Clare Speckner, programs coordinator at the Bartholomew County Public Library, said incorporating the anniversary of the moon landing fit right in with the library’s summer reading theme, “Universal Stories.”
Showing the creativity and intelligence of America’s scientists, mathematicians and all the other men and women who made the mission possible is one reason why Speckner decided to bring presenters such as Walorski and Lynch to the library.
“It’s important,” Clare said. “How do you even think that way? To figure all this out, to land somebody on the moon? It’s beyond me.”
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Bartholomew County Public Library events:
Dawn of the Space Age
When: 10 to 10:45 a.m. July 13
Where: L.S. Noblitt Planetarium at Columbus East High School
What: The program follows the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the competition between the U.S.S.R. and the United States to conquer space and continues into recreational space travel.
Who: Ages 5 and older
To register: mybcpl.org.
Apollo 13 Film
When: 6 to 8:30 p.m. July 13
What: The 1995 film is based on the true story of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission bound for the moon.
Who: All ages
Celebrate NASA’s 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11’s Historic Moon Landing
When: 4 to 5 p.m. July 15
What: A live webcast from the American Museum of Natural History will feature a guided recreation of the Apollo 11 voyage
Who: All ages
How Big Is The Universe?
When: 6 p.m. July 15
What: Presenter Paul Walorski will use models and pictures to help illustrate the relative sizes and distances to the moon, sun, plants, stars and galaxies.
Who: All ages
Apollo 11: One Great Leap, A Series of Firsts
When: 6 p.m. July 16
What: Actor Terry Lynch will portray astronaut Neil Armstrong as he recounts the lead up to the first moon landing.
Who: Recommended for Grades 5 and up
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To learn more about NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to the moon, visit nasa.gov.
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- The moon isn’t round. It’s actually shaped like an egg.
- The moon is bigger than Pluto.
- The moon is moving away from Earth.
- The sky always looks black on the moon because the light coming from the sun doesn’t pass through the molecules that make the Earth’s sky appear blue.
- There’s no sound on the moon because of the moon’s virtual lack of atmosphere.
- It gets unbearably cold — and unbearably hot.
- It would take 26 days for a commercial airplane to reach the moon. It took Apollo 11 about three days.
- The moon and the sun look the same size because the sun is about 400 times farther away from the Earth, but the sun is actually about 400 times bigger than the moon.
- Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong also left an olive branch-shaped gold pin, messages from 73 world leaders, a patch from the Apollo 1 mission and medals in honor of two of the first Soviet astronauts who died in flight, along with a flag and plaque on the moon.
Source: Parade
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