Artwork-Wink-at-the-Blue-Moon-and-Neil-Armstrong

Description - An effort prompted by a group of people on a Facebook event for August 31st, 2012. https://www.facebook.com/events/479905805361466/permalink/482209508464429/?notif_t=like I took this photograph about 845pm with a GE W1200. This photo is particularly important to me because once upon a time when I was only 4 years old... "In April 1959, despite the fact that Glenn had not earned the required college degree, he was assigned to NASA as one of the original group of seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury. During this time, he remained an officer in the United States Marine Corps. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, on the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, circling the globe three times during a flight lasting 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. This made Glenn the third American in space and the fifth human being in space. Perth, Western Australia became known worldwide as the "City of Light" when residents turned on their house, car and streetlights as Glenn passed overhead. The city repeated the act when Glenn rode the Space Shuttle in 1998. During the mission there was concern over a ground indication that his heat shield had come loose, which could allow it to fail during re-entry through the atmosphere, causing his capsule burn up. Flight controllers had Glenn modify his re-entry procedure by keeping his retrorocket pack on over the shield in an attempt to keep it in place. He made his splashdown safely, and afterwards it was determined that the indicator was faulty." At about 15 minutes before 5pm that day the phone rang just as everyone in the family sat down to dinner. I was next to the phone and was practicing my best phone answering manners, so I answered with "Hello Baldwins", and a voice asked me if Bill Baldwin was there. (Dad was the salesman for advanced products for Corning Glass Works, makers of the heat sheild), I replied "Yes, sir, may I ask who's calling?" And a voice waaaay out in the distance, in a calm southern drawl said:" Son it'd take too long to introduce everyone, there's 125 of us on the line, will you please just put your Dad on the phone?" To which I answered, "Yes sir". And laid the phone down. Then I went to the kitchen table and said "Dad the phone is for you", and Mom asked "Who is it?", and I said I don't know but the man said there are 125 of them on the line and to get Dad to the phone. Which made Mom have a quizzical look on her face. Dad spent the next several hours on the phone locating the engineers that had made that heat shield, and the windows, and other glass parts that went into the ship. And in honor of Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon: The correct quotation (his manner of speech slightly changed this to the ever quoted version): "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind."

Wink at the Blue Moon and Neil Armstrong

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