Where Were You When Apollo 11 Landed? | posted by MikesView

Posted on July 19, 2019
Filed Under Space | 4206Leave a Comment2019-07-19+20%3A07%3A28MikesView

What follows is from a comment I made on Facebook to a post I shared from my employer, Raytheon:

My post: How many remember where they were when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface?

Apollo 11

I remember exactly where I was when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, from his lunar lander, for the first time. I was with my parents and my brother Pat in Cerritos, CA, where our family was visiting another family to watch the lunar landing and first moon walk together.

The significance of that visit was that my father, Richard Kelley, founder and president of Downey Tool and Abrasive Company and his friend and colleague, Ken McGilp, founder of Mech-Electron Company, where both small businesses supplied Rockwell and Aerojet General with products that were used to produce the Apollo Capsule and Command-Module elements of the Apollo program.

I have specific memories that as we kids and our mothers all sat in chairs and a couch all arranged around the television, my father and his friend both had looks of concern. Much later, I realized that what they were concerned with was that the landing signified an end of outside product purchases, by Rockwell and Aerojet, as related to Apollo.

Every time there is some space program documentary, when they get to covering North American, later North American-Rockwell and eventually just Rockwell, they almost always show Apollo Capsule and Command-Module production areas in Downey, CA. The heavy machines, machine tools and supplies shown are many items sold to Rockwell by my father. It blows me away every time.

The end of Apollo, the winding down of the Vietnam conflict and the crash of one of the Rockwell XB-70 Valkyrie test aircraft, which ultimately ended that program, combined over the following few years to wipe out our folks small businesses.

This part was not posted on Facebook:

That event impacted our family for the rest of our lives. Aside from all of the amazing technological changes that have taken place from the wellspring that was Apollo, from a personal perspective, what happened on July 20, 1969 forever changed us from a happy confident family to a fearful, uneasy period where no large scale customers loomed on the horizon. The business was gone by the end of 1972. Then, in the mid-seventies, the Rockwell B-1A seemed to offer a chance to reestablish Downey Tool and Abrasive. Hopes began to swell in many circles. My father even arranged for me to get a tour of the full size mock up of the B-1A at Rockwell. However, Jimmy Carter cancelled the B-1 program shortly after he became President in 1977. Once again, hopes were dashed. My father returned to his professional career as a Controller of business, this time growing a door manufacturing company until 1980 when he embarked on a five year stint in Saudi Arabia.