Page 4 - Boca ViewPointe - September '19

Page 4, Viewpointe September 2019

A Summer of Amazing Memories

By George Steinman musical Hair. A day of joy and thanks and happiness I will never tickets at the old Westbury Music Fair on Long Island. There
forget. were a lot of other people waiting there and of course there was
As you can see from the title of this article, this summer was Woodstock - Three Days of Peace and Music also idle conversation. Someone said Judy Collins is great but
an incredible one with three of my unforgettable memories from And there it was August 15,16,17 at Yasgur’s farm – three who is Richie Havens as one of her associated acts. All of a
the past. The summer started, as usual with celebrating Susan’s days of peace and music. In a sense a new generation and sudden from instantaneous memory recall came ‘Who’s Richie
birthday on July 4th. Yes – she calls herself a ‘firecracker baby’ culture was being born. This was a rather dramatic change for Havens?’ Do you mean the Richie Havens wearing a smock
and we had a grand old time. our country with its political issues and rather terrible times. singing Freedom twelve times? Among the silence the woman
West Point Sixty Five Years Ago President Kennedy was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was standing right behind us, tapped me on the shoulder said ‘I was
Two days later on July 6th the amazing memories from the assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and there too.’ And the laughter ensued. Second story. We were
past started to resurface. I started getting a bunch of emails from caused riots across the country, and last we had the Vietnam War. invited by one of our friends to a concert at the Great Neck Park
my old buddies from the academy. They all included ‘Hey – do And then came an amazing new culture. The music helped this on Long Island facing Long Island Sound. And the star – Richie
you remember that sixty five years ago today the great class of new world change. There was Richie Havens as the opening act Havens. After a lot of his songs there was a quiet period and all
1958 was sworn in at Trophy Point at West Point?’ Oh my G-d! with among other songs his one word anthem song Freedom. of a sudden came the words ‘Freedom.’ A lot of us stood up and
At first I didn’t remember. And then all of a sudden it all came There was Janis Joplin singing Me and Bobby McGee. And at applauded and cheered. The others had absolutely no clue.
back to me in a split second. There we were – over eight hundred the opposite end we had Jimi Hendrix with his own ‘version’
plebes, in one day given haircuts, uniforms, room barracks of The Star-Spangled Banner. Looking back I have two Richie George Steinman is a resident of The Palms and can be
assignments, and being sworn as part of the regular USA Army. Havens stories. First years later I was with Susan trying to get contacted at sgphotollc@gmail.com. 
It was hopefully to be the start of an amazing adventure, for
lack of a better descriptor. And then came the question ‘Do you
remember your cadet serial number?’ Of course I remembered
it - C14664 as I always pictured myself as having a really good
memory of things totally useless to man and G-d. Most of my
old buddies forgot theirs but concluded that, as they were given
out alphabetically, one class member had to remember as his
number was C14444. And many old memories and friendships
were rekindled.
The Eagle has Landed
July 20, 1969 – the whole world breathed a sigh of relief
when they heard those words when the Apollo 11 (Eagle) LM
spacecraft touched down on the moon – ‘The Eagle had landed.’
And certainly a huge cheer emerged from Grumman’s Bethpage
facility. An incredible successful mission. Working at Grumman
at the time was a marvelous experience dealing with some of
the best engineering and scientific personnel in the country. And
also at that time Grumman’s technical library was second only
to Dartmouth’s library – the best in the country. Way back then
I was in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Department and
was very heavily involved in the autopilot development along
with training astronauts on docking simulations.
Recently I picked up several books on the history of our
space program along with details of the Apollo 11 mission. It
brought back many memories. The first thing I remembered
was that the Lunar Module was originally called the Lunar
Excursion Module, or LEM. The Excursion part was dropped
for numerous reasons and LEM became simply LM. At that time
the program was engulfed in a whole set of abbreviations created
to make discussions and working a lot easier. My involvement
was with, of course, LMDAP, pronounced as lemdap short for
Lunar Module Digital Autopilot. And I also found out through my
readings that Grumman employees were, for whatever reasons,
not called Grummanites but ‘Grummies.’ Ugh!
Among others, there are things that I will always remember
occurred the day after the moon landing and several weeks
later with the astronauts return to Grumman. As one of the
best advertisements on the day after the Apollo moon landing,
Volkswagen took out a full page ad in the New York Times
(actually page 3) with the picture of a Volkswagen Beetle with the
caption ‘It’s ugly but it gets you there.’ And then the astronauts
returned. I remember it was early on a Tuesday afternoon we
were working and all of a sudden we heard a band playing from
across the runway. The astronauts had arrived. We all stopped
working, walked across the runway (which was closed) and the
festivities began. Just as we crossed the band started playing
Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In which was sung famously by The
Fifth Dimension as a combination of the two songs from the

Please Be Courteous,

Pedestrians have the
right of way!

Your Driver
Airport Car Service
WPB, FLL, MIA

HowarD BarrY
No Worry Arrival
& Departures
Lowest Prices Boca Pointe
Boca Raton, FL
561-254-2550 yourdriverhb@gmail.com