Apollo mission patches put stars in the eyes of a family

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The Apollo 11 mission patch. Photo: NASA/Neil F. Smith/YouTube
The Apollo 11 mission patch. Photo: NASA/Neil F. Smith/YouTube

I had the kind of dad who brought his work home with him. That was exciting since he was in the business of putting men on the moon.

Each time there was a scheduled launch, my two brothers and I could always expect our dad to come home with mission patches. Robert Pierini was an engineer in the late 1960s and early ’70s with an electronics company in Milwaukee that developed the guidance system for the Apollo mission.

So when filmmaker Neil F. Smith recently posted a video to YouTube, bringing animated life to each mission emblem, I immediately felt the same rush I had as a kid when I held a patch in my hand.

The mission patch for Apollo 13. Photo: NASA/Neil  F. Smith/YouTube
The mission patch for Apollo 13. Photo: NASA/Neil F. Smith/YouTube

I was too young to remember the first few, including Apollo 11, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk the lunar surface. But my memories picked up for the missions after. Like most living rooms, the launches were big television events narrated by trusted CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.

It was an exciting time in America. It was a stage of the Space Race where we felt like NASA was pulling ahead of the pioneering Soviets, our Cold War enemy. And then to have someone in the house who was a part of the unfolding history was an electrifying source of pride.

The patches were colorful and cool. Every once in a while, dad would bring home a gauge or a lever from a control panel that we were allowed to touch – carefully. We boys would get a patch, while it was tradition for my father to give my mother a charm for a bracelet marking missions dating back to the first Gemini.

There were pins and tie tacks, including an Apollo 11 tie bar with the words “Mission Team.” I wore it on my wedding day.

There would be trips to “the Cape,” the way he referred to Cape Canaveral, and snapshots he took of the Saturn V rocket being positioned on the launch pad. I wish I could find the photograph of him from the Launch Control Center wearing a white hard hat, his work badge showing, dorky glasses that now seem hipster-chic and the launch umbilical tower in the background.

Soon after Armstrong and Aldrin, America lost interest in the moon and my dad was laid off in 1973. He could have collected unemployment, but he was too proud, instead taking odd jobs like teaching drafting at a local community college. He eventually found work for a company that made diesel engines, but this brought no excitement to him or our house.

Occasionally, often at my pleading, he would bring out a film projector and show 8 mm films from the different missions. There was no sound, so my dad would excitedly color commentate some detail to which he had been privy. He would sometimes grow quiet during these films, the only sound being the projector’s motor, and I could sense he was feeling a longing for work that had that same purpose.

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