When I went out to Oshkosh in July 1994, it was the 25th Anniversary of the Moon Landing. In an outdoor pavilion close to the runway they set a record for attendance at an Apollo 11 anniversary event that year that had 10,000 people attend. I must say, I had no conception there were that many people sitting out on the grass around the pavilion as my buddy and I showed up early and got great seats inside about halfway to the stage. It was a beautiful summer night, and the pavilion was open on all sides.
If I recall correctly, there were 15 of the Apollo astronauts there including the entire Apollo 11 crew (an apparent rarity, since Neil Armstrong apparently didn’t do many appearances) and for several hours, they all sat on the stage at the front, getting up in front of the microphone, and spinning yarns…it was amazing! Totally unfiltered, almost as if you were in a small room, just you and them, having a beer!
They told stories about Gemini and Apollo, one stuck out, Jim Lovell (I think) spoke about spending time in the cramped Gemini capsule with Frank Borman, who had a legendary gas problem! There was a lot of laughing there!
But the one thing that stayed in my memory after all these years…the sun had gone down, it was dark out, and the astronauts were taking turns telling stories, and right in the middle of one astronaut (I can’t remember who it was) telling his tale, there came a great roar behind us, being close to the runway as the picture below shows (red arrow-I “think” that is the pavilion, though I wonder if they built a more modern one with more capacity somewhere on the grounds...perhaps another Freeper with better memory can tell me if that is the pavilion they used back in the Nineties...). I photoshopped a distorted Concorde in there to show how excellently close it was!)
Every single person in that crowd turned in unison, to see a Concorde SST taking off in full afterburner on the darkened runway, all four engines screaming in an ear-splitting roar, spitting out huge tongues of bright blue flame what seemed hundreds of feet behind the plane speeding down the runway! Everyone completely ignored this astronaut up on the stage getting his chance to tell a story, but instead of him being put out about it, he could be heard to encourage the audience to turn around and watch: “Go ahead and watch! We are aviation enthusiasts up here too, and we are watching!”
There was something just beautiful about that. These were men who had made a living flying planes, had gone to the moon, but in the end…they were just like us, like a kid in a back yard watching with upturned eyes, some Piper Cub or jet airliner flying over! How I love that memory!
RIP, Mr. Collins. Thank you.