Wina Golden, Theodore Sturgeon’s wife, recounts for ABC News, her husband’s reaction to the first Moon landing, July 20, 1969. Wina Golden is a well-known journalist for a variety of publications, including the NY Times and worked for many years as a journalist for all the major networks of the time.

The missing "a" has been a news story for weeks. After 37 years, Neil Armstrong's alleged first words on the moon are now deciphered by modern technology as grammatically correct; he did say "One small step for a man..." But that was not the first thing I remember him saying.

I remember that day, those moments, as if they were burned into my heart and my brain. I remember that the first words of the first human on the moon were, "It's some kind of dust. I can kick it with my toe."

On July 20th, 1969, I had been married just three months, and the previous week, learned that we were pregnant. My husband was a science fiction writer. The moon landing was as important to him as the child inside was to me; but then, in some mysterious way, the two became connected in my mind; the child that would come out of me and the astronauts that would come out of the ship and walk on the moon.

I remember Ted and I sat on the edge of the bed, watching our small black and white television set, our shoulders pressed together, both of us feeling a tinge of worry.

The moon landing was not a certain thing. No one knew what the surface was; it could be quicksand that would suck the lunar module into oblivion or it could be a glassy hardness that would not give traction to the landing legs. Neither Armstrong nor Buzz Aldrin, the other astronaut in the module, could see beneath them and had no way to know how close to the surface they were as they descended.

If one leg set down in a deep hole, that could tip the craft over and make it impossible to blast back to the command ship.

The lander settled slowly while a countdown measured how much time they had left. If it got to zero, they would have to abort the landing to make sure of having enough fuel to fly back to the command module.

Ted and I had been holding hands; now our hands moved up to grip each other's arms. I remember gasping for air because I had been forgetting to breathe. It seemed to take forever.

The astronauts had to check that the spacecraft was stable, that nothing had been damaged.

Then the words were sent over the radio back to the mother planet, "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed."

Ted and I burst into sobs, crying like little children, our arms so tight around each other that they went numb.
Armstrong came out of the craft. He turned on the cameras attached to the ship, and they showed his careful foot searching for the rungs of the ladder. He kept one foot on the ladder while his other foot went down and dabbed at the moon's surface.

In my memory, that's when he said those first words, telling his fellow humans what the surface of the moon was like. It was such a human thing to say. Only then did he put both feet on the moon, take a step back and say the majestic remark fitting for such a momentous occasion.

There are many differing memories of those moments, even by those who were involved.

Our American space effort lasted three more years. It was an incredible time of genius and ingenuity and courage that blossomed less than a decade after President Kennedy told Congress in 1961 that he wanted to land a man on the moon.

But even before that first landing, Presidents Nixon and Johnson cut the space budget.

Apollo 17 was the last ship to land on the moon from earth. Gene Cernan was the commander of Apollo 17. On December 14, 1972, he said the last words of the last man on the moon, "...we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed, the crew of Apollo 17."

But there is a practically unknown piece of history from back then that is perfect for today, when there is little hope and even less peace in the world.

One of the engineers who was essential to the American space effort was Farouk El-Baz, an Egyptian scientist who selected the moon landing sites and helped train the astronauts.

There had been problems with the Apollo 15 ship, and the scientists were worried that something might go wrong during the mission, as it did with Apollo 13. El-Baz told the Apollo 15 astronauts that he wanted to protect them, so he was giving them a Qur'an to take on their flight.

Commander Dave Scott said he wanted it, because "We need all the help we can get."

Not many people know that the Muslim sacred book went with the American astronauts on one of the final missions of peaceful exploration into outer space.