REMEMBERING APOLLO 11

This card is one of my most treasured possessions. I met Buzz Aldrin at the gala opening of the “Back to the Future” attraction at the Universal Theme Park in Orlando. I was there as a guest of Douglass Trumbull, the VFX pioneer who created the ride. Also in attendance that evening was Buzz Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon. As a filmmaker, you get to meet a lot of famous people in the movie business and I’ve certainly met my share of them. But meeting and chatting with Colonel Aldrin was an extraordinary and thrilling moment in my life that occurred on May 2, 1991. I grew up in Central Florida and witnessed every manned space flight up to Apollo 8. Like every other boy in my neighborhood, we were completely taken with the space program and astronauts. If a launch occurred during school hours we all piled out to the playground to watch it lift off. In less than 10 years, the wispy contrail of Mercury 1 turned into the colossal Saturn V vehicle, clearly visible from our playground 35 miles away.

Buzz and I talked of these things and more and when he had to move along, he gave me this card. When I got home I put it in a safe place, so safe that I forgot where that was. 28 years later I found it while packing for the move to Tallahassee. I was leafing through some old books that I was planning to give to Goodwill and there, tucked within the pages of a book about “Peter the Great” was the card, so close to being lost to me forever.

I almost burst into tears when it fell out of the book and landed face down on the floor. Could it be my Buzz Aldrin business card? Yep!