Exactly 48 years ago, today, three American astronauts landed on the moon. At the time, Richard Millhouse Nixon (later of Watergate infamy) was president of the USA. It is likely that the USA is planning a big celebration in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the event. It was a historic occasion as it was believed by many that it had never happened before.

So what did the USA get from the $30 billion it spent on that space flight? According Paul D Lowman Jr: “First, and perhaps most important, it was realised at the time of President [Jphn F] Kennedy’s 1961 proposal that the primary motivation for sending a man to the moon was political, not scientific.

“The Soviet Union at the time had a commanding lead in space flight, and was a belligerent and expansive power in the Cold War…Even if the Apollo missions had never landed on the moon, the programme as a whole stimulated projects that learned an enormous amount about our own planet, Earth.”

The greatest accomplishment, according to Lowman and many others, was in weather reporting, as well as a greater knowledge of the Earth from photographs taken in space.

Of course, I have heard the stories that the Soviet Union had actually landed on the moon before July 20, 1969, but I am not debating that today. What I will do, though, is to give a Jamaican historical context to the time when an American man first landed on the moon.

At that time, in 1969, I was 15 going on 16, and I recall the Sunday night very well. Both radio stations were carrying the event, as well as the old black-and-white TV, station on JBC-TV, which was all we had as television then, showed scenes. Jamaica would be celebrating its seventh anniversary of political independence the following month and the older Jamaicans were asking, in surprise, “Seven years already?”

In July 1969, when man landed on the moon, Hugh Shearer, who succeeded Sir Donald Sangster when he died after 48 days in office, was more than two years into his role as prime minister. Sir Alexander Bustamante, who was succeeded by Sangster, was however still the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party and would relinquish this position in 1974. Bustamante died in 1977.

Five months earlier, Michael Manley became president of the People’s National Party (PNP) having won an internal PNP election. The position was not handed to him by his father, contrary to what a blogger wrote in response to a columnist some time last week. And Michael Manley, at the time, was the leader of the Opposition, having succeeded his father. Norman Manley was still alive when an American man first landed on the moon. He died less than two months later on September 2, 1969.

Incidentally, the day before American man landed on the moon, the PNP Youth Organisation was launched at Excelsior High School. At that time, Leroy Cooke was PNP youth organiser. The youngest of the PNP vice-presidents, P J Patterson, then 34 years old, addressed the gathering. There were also presentations by Carlyle Dunkley, recently deceased. The late Anthony Spaulding was there, and so was the late Ralph Brown. And the late Eric Bell, then mayor of Kingston, took part in a group discussion in the afternoon session.

The education level of Jamaicans today has improved by leaps and bounds over what obtained when American man landed on the moon in 1969. Many Jamaicans wanted to know if they found people there and what they looked like. I know, because I was asked that question by some elderly people. This, however, might have been a reaction all over the then world, as there were pockets of ignorance everywhere, especially and including the very USA that landed man on the moon that year.

More specifically, many Jamaicans did not believe that it happened at all. In August 1969, after leaving the annual cadet camp held in Moneague, I spent two weeks of the long summer holidays with my grandparents in Llandewey in St Thomas. It was an experience going out with the workers as the rounded up the cows from one pen to the other and hearing the discussions as they worked. Many of the farm workers were firmly of the view that it was all a made-up story. The truth is that many around the world, in 2017, still believe it to be a made-up story.

Others in Jamaica, especially elderly church women, felt that it was a form of sacrilege to be “interfering with God’s business”. But the discussion lingered on for the rest of the year while other things happened in the society. On the call- in radio programme, What’s Your Grouse?, heard on RJR in those days, a man asked the host, Phillip Jackson: “Every day I am hearing about man landing on the moon, how come they never went to the sun?

So Phillip Jackson answered that the sun was too hot to do that. The man responded, “So why they don’t go at night, Sir?” Surprisingly, though, there are still Jamaicans, despite greater opportunities in education, who believe that the sun goes underneath the Earth at night and comes up in the east in the mornings. However, those who believe so are substantially less than there were in the late 1960s.

At that time, Catholic Opinion, which was established in 1896 and second in age only to The Gleaner, was a weekly paper that was published on Fridays and sold at Roman Catholic churches on Sundays. They had a column called ‘Young Catholic Opinions’ and it was Holy Rosary Catholic Youth Organisation’s turn to comment for an edition printed in December 1969.

The question we answered was: Have trips to the moon lessened man’s belief in God? I was one of the writers. Another was Carmita Albarus, then known as Carmen Albarus, who today is world renowned as the social worker assigned to Lee Boyd Malvo, the Jamaican juvenile convicted of murder in the USA in October 2002. Nearly four years ago, Carmita was the guest speaker at a banquet marking the 100th anniversary of Holy Rosary Church in October 2013.

Did man ever go to the moon or was it a hoax? Were Americans the first on the moon? The discussion continues.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com