Thursday, October 1, 2026
On July 20, 1969, 600 million people across the world stared at their televisions or listened intently to their radios as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history when they became the first men to walk on the moon. What was considered fantasy for thousands of years became a reality, stirring awe in those who viewed or heard it.
With its status as a pivotal moment in history, the Apollo 11’s lunar landing has become a “Where were you?” moment for those who witnessed it — including many in Glen Cove.
A personal investment
During the 1960s, Stuart Held, who grew up in Brooklyn and moved to Glen Cove in 1962, worked with Ehrenreich Photo Optical Industries, a company that loaned camera equipment to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. He played a part in providing that equipment to NASA during Project Mercury, the program that launched Americans into space. He was even in the press gallery when John Glenn, the third American to be launched into space and the first man to orbit the earth, piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 in 1962.
When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Held, then 32, was with his wife, Nina, and their family on Fire Island. His father-in-law bought a television just to see the moon landing, which they all watched in a beach house overlooking the ocean. Held remembered tearing up when he saw Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, not only out of pride in the fact that they were Americans, but also because he contributed to what he called “a pinnacle of engineering.”
Chuck Van Horn, a San Diego native who moved to Glen Cove in 1980, also had a personal connection to the lunar landing: His father, an engineer at Northrop Grumman in San Diego, worked on the lunar excursion module’s landing pads. Van Horn, who was 29 at the time, watched the lunar landing on television, filled with pride in his father, a Navy veteran and a one-time Japanese prisoner of war survivor. The moment stands out in time for him.
“It was an incredible feat,” Van Horn said. “It was a miracle, as far as I’m concerned.”
On the other side of the world
Glen Cove’s Fred Nielsen, a member of the American Legion Glenwood Landing Post. No. 336, joined the Marine Corps in March of 1969, and was quickly shipped overseas to serve in Vietnam. He recalled feeling a strong sense of pride in the United States for being the country represented by the men accomplishing such a remarkable feat.
Being on the other side of the world while Americans were making history, however, gave Nielsen a “peculiar” feeling. He and his fellow soldiers listened to the moon landing and, for a brief moment, he said, they didn’t feel like they had to fight for their lives.
“My feelings were awe,” Nielsen said. “I thought that we in Vietnam were doing the most important work before I saw that.”
Although the landing confirmed for him that Americans were world leaders, Nielsen said that people around the world joined in the celebration, seemingly comfortable with the fact that the U.S. was the first country to make it to the moon.
The average American
Judy Imerti, then 35 and living in Glen Cove, and her husband, Rocky, were invited to a friend’s home to watch the event on a small television. She remembered sitting on the floor, staring, awestruck, at the screen. “When they landed, I couldn’t move or talk,” Imerti recounted. “I barely breathed. And many times after that — even now, 50 years later — I look at the moon, and it just thrills me and amazes me to think about what they did.”
Carol Waldman, a 16-year-old going into her junior year of high school in the Bronx at the time, was glued to the TV alongside her sister and parents that night. They welcomed the new era of humanity with a toast of seltzer and chocolate egg creams.
“I remember my parents saying, ‘This is a celebration,’” Waldman recalled, “‘not just for people exploring space — this is a celebration for humanity.’”
Waldman, who is now the executive director of the Glen Cove Senior Center, still remembers her parents telling her that the moon landing was proof that anything is possible, as long as you have the vision and the work ethic.
