LAUNCH OF SPUTNIK
OCTOBER 4, 1957
Personal Stories
Personal Stories
Eight grade, age 13, Sharon, Connecticut
Pete, the town wino, tells us he saw it
"A replica of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in the world to be put into outer space..."
Waiting for a ride to school
in the chill of dawn
the town wino comes up to us
pointing to the sky
"That thing those Russians put there
going around the Earth...
I saw it,"
he says slurring his words,
"...a little silver ball"
We stood in front of this building waiting for
our ride to school in Sharon, Connecticut. (Google Earth)
We laughed
at Pete
but underneath we shivered
Because as young boys
soon to be draft age
we knew
we would be involved
Wounded during a military operation in Vietnam in 1967,
10 years after the launch of Sputnik.
I too remember watching Sputnik flyovers from my front yard, along with a number of scientists who had been transferred from Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project to Brookhaven.
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