Big news on July 21, 1969

AS WIRE EDITOR for the Greeley (Colorado) Tribune on July 21, 1969, my job was to shuffle through the paper versions of Associated Press news, select which stories the newspaper should use, and then find the perforated tape coded to mechanically operate the Linotype to cast the stories in lead.

There was no doubt about the top story for that day. Two Americans, Commander Neil Armstrong and Pilot Buzz Aldrin, placed their “lunar landing module” named Eagle on the surface of the moon, lowered a ladder, and set human feet on the Moon.

My job included writing the headlines for the stories I selected. I would pin the perforated tape to the hard copy with a clothes pin. Imagine that. Men had journeyed to and walked on the moon, and newspapers like ours told the story with ticker tape and clothes pins!

The headline I wrote was special, and obviously I have never forgotten it. It was an 8-column (full-page) doozy. The font was called a “wood” because letters that large were too heavy if cast in lead like the other type used for “letterpress” printing presses. So when a news occasion called for big type, the rarely-used woods were rolled out.

Woods were common in tabloids, but not so in newspapers. Such printed “shouting” was reserved for special circumstances. Many a smug newspaper person of the time thought there were very few times when shouting was appropriate. Tabloids could scream, but respectable newspapers retained their, uh, decorum.

But men on the moon? Absolutely!

Our paper was an afternoon publication, also common in those days. By the time our presses rolled, the lunar module Eagle had lifted back into space, docked with the Command/Service Module, was jettisoned and left in space as Columbia headed home without it. The three men aboard the modules, Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins splashed down to Earth a few days later.