Walter Cronkite holds up a special edition of The New York Times, published immediately after the first moon landing.

This image was photographed off my parents' TV at home in 1969 while I was on leave from the U.S. Army. Yes, I remember the first blurry images from the moon. But, it is this image that has stuck with me.

As a journalist myself--I had graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in January of 1968--I have always liked this image for reasons I find hard to explain. Yes, Cronkite had been the narrator of many of the important events of my generation. But, there were other factors, too.

Perhaps it's the overlap of television and newspaper journalism. I don't recall exactly why Cronkite decided to display this newspaper. Was it because the event was so momentous that The New York Times decided to publish a special edition? Was it because the staid newspaper had used such a giant headline? Was it because it somehow seemed more real when The New York Times said so?

As chief photographer and assistant managing editor of the Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper at UNC-CH, I met quite a few of the Apollo astronauts (including all three who died in the launchpad fire) when they came to the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill for astronomy training. I never met Cronkite, though, like many in my generation, I felt that I knew him from spending so many hours with him watching television.

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