Long Island Proud: To The Moon And Back

If you live on the “island” you understand everything there is to say about being Long Island Proud. This column is a weekly shout out to someone or something that makes all of Long Island proud. Together, Long Islanders have withstood ferocious hurricanes, humbling snowstorms, power outages and other calamities. Yet here we are out on the LIE, Sunrise Highway, Northern or Southern State traveling east or west, usually battling the sunlight in the front windshield or rear window to get to and from work daily. We were born to deal with the rising and setting sun.

The greatest achievement of man in my lifetime has to be the landing of men on the moon. The spacecraft that actually landed and took off from the moon in the (1969-1972), was the LEM (Lunar Landing Module.) Besides being made on Long Island by Long Island engineers at Grumman the actual concept of the docking and rendezvous with the Apollo capsule was actually dreamed up by Thomas Joseph Kelly, who many call “the father of the Lunar Module." Kelly, although born in Brooklyn, was raised in Merrick, Long Island, attending Wellington C. Mepham High School. Then he attended Cornell University with a Grumman scholarship. He received a Masters degree from Columbia University and his PhD from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. President John F. Kennedy himself approved Grumman’s and Kelly’s plan, choosing from a reported 60 other proposals. Thomas Joseph Kelly died in Cutchogue on March 23, 2002 at the age of 72 after a six-year battle with pulmonary fibrosis.

While taking the helm of creating Lunar Module, Kelly had 7,000 employees under him. When Neil Armstrong landed the LEM on the moon, and stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, Joseph Thomas Kelly, already having put in seven to nine years on the project, had just turned 40 years old.

At the time so many thought we were on the dawn of space travel, but for a host of reasons starting with the costs, the space program was aimed in another direction and only now almost 50 years later are missions to the moon and Mars being planned. I am 65 years old and hope to live long enough to see humans travel to another world and return to earth safely like the did back in 1969 to 1971.

In 1998 Kelly reportedly said about the LEM experience, “It was the greatest thing in my career. And in hindsight, it was even more significant than we thought at the time.”

I might just add that there has never been another spacecraft ever built that has carried humans to another unearthly body, moon, planet and back. It took the astronauts to the moon, it landed on the moon and then it blasted off from the moon to rendezvous with the Apollo spacecraft and head back to earth. There are four of the 14 Lunar Modules still in existence, including one at ‘The Cradle of Aviation Museum,” Mitchell Field, 1 Charles Lindbergh Blvd, Uniondale, Long Island. It is on display — “Long Island Proud!”

T.J. Clemente is a columnist for Patch.

The above photo is courtesy of NASA.