Annual meeting

To be sure, this wasn’t simply a walk on the moon. When astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface more than three decades ago, it was the beginning of heretofore unimaginable things — both in the stars and back on Earth. It was history. It was honor. It was hope.

“To this day, people still feel compelled to tell me where they were when we walked on the moon,” Aldrin, 73, told a late-February gathering of nearly 600 people at this year’s annual meeting of Community Hospital Foundation and the Auxiliary. “I write down where they were in my Little Black Book.”

Wherever they were, they watched. Before the largest worldwide television audience in history on July 20, 1969, Aldrin climbed down the ladder toward the “gray” moon and then stepped onto the ash-like surface. “It was almost like talcum powder, but with no billowing dust.”

As Aldrin and Armstrong left their moon-boot prints, they remembered to collect some photos for their scrapbook.

“In one picture that Neil took, I was saluting the American flag,” Aldrin said. “That’s got to be one of the proudest moments for an American… The images of that day are burned into my memory.”

The aftermath of that day is equally etched in Aldrin’s psyche. After plunking down — upside down — in the Pacific Ocean, the astronauts immediately were taken into quarantine. They celebrated their return with isolation, a shot of whiskey, and some unexpected wonderment.

Then there were parades, guest appearances, autograph signings. “Life really changed,” Aldrin said. But not all for the better. “It fills one full of awe and responsibility — how am I going to deal with life after this? It isn’t as easy as it might seem.”

Amid all the admiration, Aldrin was battling alcoholism. “Clearly, it’s been one of the most difficult things for me to do,” he said. “But now I have 24 years’ sobriety.”

He also has a vested interest in seeing us return to space. “We went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years,” he said, “and we’ve been languishing since. … Space needs to be made available to journalists, teachers, poets.”

In other annual meeting news, the Board of Trustees of Community Hospital Foundation elected new members George W. Couch, III, George E. Miller, Jr., and David H. Watts, and recognized retiring members Roberta B. Bialek, Robert A. Fuhrman, Jeffrey Hyde, M.D., and Lillian King.