'It's part of the fabric of who I am': Moon shot changed local landscape, lives

Joan Van Scyoc doesn't remember the color of the swimsuit she wore in the second annual Moonwalk Festival Parade, or the names of those who rode in the convertible with her.

But she does remember the intensity of the excitement along the Space Coast, as plentiful as sunshine and sand. She remembers the adulation showered on those who had suited up and headed for space and those who had anything to do with getting them there.

And the pride. She can still feel the pride.

"It's part of the fabric of who I am," Scyoc said.

As the 49th anniversary of the first moon landing approaches, Van Scyoc said that pivotal moment in American history is important to her "to this day." And she still feels its impact on this sliver of Florida where the space race was won.

Countless other Brevard residents who lived through that special period of Space Coast life share her sentiments. 

In July 1969, Jane Chaney and Martha Kamm were public school teachers who took every opportunity to work space-related themes into curriculum. Theodis Ray was working at Kennedy Space Center, where he had started as a janitor in 1963 and would, at retirement in 2000, be logistics lead for United Launch Alliance. Susan Hamed, who would later become an owner of the Moon Light Drive In in Titusville, was a teen whose father was in the military.

The race to space changed everything in Brevard County in the '60s, they say.

The financial impact was tremendous as every launch brought crowds from near and far, filling hotels, packing restaurants, jamming roadways and sending tourists home with space-themed memorabilia.

And Apollo 11 was beyond compare. It was estimated that between 750,000 and 1 million people came to Brevard County to witness that historic launch on July 16, 1969, which, according to reports at the time, even found the Indian River teeming with boaters.

Four days later, if you were "there" —  in front of a TV — you can most likely still recite Neil Armstrong's words as his feet touched the lunar surface at 10:56 p.m. on July 20, 1969.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," he declared, representing, in no small way, all of us.

Six Apollo missions followed the excitement of the Apollo 11 moon landing. By the time Apollo 17 touched down on the moon on Dec. 11, 1972, the landings, while still important, had begun to seem almost commonplace. With that mission, the Apollo program ended. Just 12 miles from the Space Center, Titusville was hit particularly hard, as laid-off workers fled the area and houses were left empty. As early as October 1969, Hamed's father was able to buy a house in Titusville for $1,000, with an assumable mortgage.

But oh, those Apollo glory days. Oh, those glory days.

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Forty-nine years later, seven years past the end of the shuttle era, four of the 12 men who walked on the moon are still alive: Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11), 88; David Scott (Apollo 15), 85; Charlie Duke (Apollo 16), 82; and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17), also 82.

The return of manned spaceflight is fast approaching. Crowds have returned to Brevard for launches. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's Space Camp draws kids from all over, including as far away as Alaska. 

People who were "there" when America won the space race are cautiously optimistic.

They're in awe. Still.

It never really went away, that feeling.

Joan Lemish Van Scyoc

Joan Lemish Van Scyoc grew up in Satellite Beach, where she went to elementary school at Sea Park and graduated from Satellite High in 1970.

Her parents moved their family from New Jersey to Florida when Van Scyoc was about 2. Her mother was the traffic manager at Patrick Air Force Base; her dad, a machinist for RCA at the Tech Lab and Eastern Test range, where he maintained tracking radar.

"The whole neighborhood was full of all kinds of military people, space people, engineers, and I went to school with their kids," Van Scyoc said. 

"With the military housing, it was one big community whose families all supported the program ... one of those big Saturns would go off and our houses would shake and the windows would vibrate. At first, when I was little, I'd run, thinking the world was coming to an end. But you got used to it, and everybody down the street would be standing in their front yards, watching."

While kids will be kids, many were fully aware of the area's importance, Van Scyoc said. 

"I think we all knew deep down inside, even being that young, that we had a stake in history," she said. 

"But as kids, we took it for granted."

The year after Van Scyoc graduated from high school, she was a finalist in the pageant for Miss Merritt Square Six, hosted by the new Merritt Square mall. That meant a spot in the July 24, 1971, Moonwalk Festival Parade, which traveled through Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral. The 139-unit event, complete with astronauts, was billed in a TODAY article as "Brevard's biggest parade in history." Grand marshals were Mickey Mouse and Debbie Dane, the Disney World "Goodwill Ambassadress."

Van Scyoc — in a one-piece swimsuit —  and other pageant finalists rode in a convertible owned by the owner of the Houston Astros ... "or so I was told," she said.

She married in 1985 and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband Neal, who works for Boeing.

Their son, Adam, is a third-year engineering major at Clemson. He hopes to one day return to Brevard County to "work for SpaceX or Blue Origin, a company like that," Van Scyoc said.

She'd love that.

"It truly is a multi-generational thing in our family," Van Scyoc said. "What a time it was back then ... and it's still exciting."

Jane Chaney and Martha (Lacey) Kamm

Jane Chaney was 31 and teaching math at Merritt Island High School in 1969. 

That same history-making year, Martha Kamm — then Martha Lacey — was a third-grade teacher at Ocean Breeze Elementary in Indian Harbour Beach. The Georgia native was 34.

In the years leading up to the first steps on the moon, which they watched on TV, the two friends were just as excited about space as the children they taught.

It was an era, they agreed, when getting out of class for a rocket launch was looked at as a privilege, not just an excuse to leave one's desk. The knowledge of what was happening in space and how it related to what was unfolding in Brevard County was palpable.

Alerts would come across the schools' public address systems, announcing it was almost time for "the shots" to go off.

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"Having it in their backyards ... that just made it even more exciting for the students," said Chaney, a South Carolina native who was Brevard County's Teacher of the Year in 1969.

"Many of their parents worked at the Space Center and they knew as much as we did about what was happening ... when we first moved to Brevard County, half the teaching population was new to the county every year. At one point, it was growing so rapidly, they couldn't build schools fast enough."

Both teachers capitalized on the excitement. 

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"We worked all kinds of activities and connections into the curriculum," said Kamm.

At an earlier point in the '60s, the two friends lived in Sanford in a house with other young, single teachers, and would drive to Jetty Park for launches. 

They recalled the crowds. Standing in the dark and, if nature called, finding a bathroom at an open restaurant. No problem: "The restaurants were open all night," said Chaney, who now lives in Indian Harbour Beach.

"And sometimes, you stood there and then the shot was scrubbed. So it was the middle of the night and you hadn't seen anything, but it was exciting."

The two women, who travel together and with other retired teachers, say current-day launches still move them from their seats. Both are impressed by the savvy of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin.

They watch rockets rise on TV — and then head to their yards for that only-on-the-Space-Coast view.

Just as they did in the 1960s, they look to the heavens in wonder.

"It doesn't matter how many times I see that," said Kamm, an Indialantic resident. 

"To me it's still miraculous and mind-boggling that we can do that ... that there are people out there with the expertise and drive and will to move forward like this."

Susan Hamed

Day or night, this family works in the Moon Light — that retro-looking, cool-kitschy Moon Light Drive In on U.S. 1 in Titusville, that is.

Susan Hamed knows its story, from the vintage sign out front to the people who've enjoyed milkshakes and memories there since Lyndon Johnson was president.

The people who would become her in-laws bought the then-Francine's restaurant in 1964, when she was still Susan Cordesco, and renamed it.

"Because of the Space Center, and we were going to the moon, my father-in-law changed its name ... and chose Moon Light," Hamed said.

Launches filled the place back in the Apollo days. The Moon Light still get rushes when launches happen, and the staff still goes outside to watch.

"We've seen people come in from all over to eat," she said.

"People are finding it because of the internet ... in the past, they'd go to the franchises, but more and more, they seem to be prone to going where the locals go to eat."

Hamed and her family arrived in Titusville in 1969 when her dad, who was in the military, retired. She had seen the moon landing in Key West. Now, she was living in the place nicknamed, in its boom days, "Space City" and "Miracle City."

She met Raymond Hamed at Titusville High School. Married him in 1972. They bought the place from his parents in 1977 and saw no reason to change the name. 

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Now 63, she has seen her children and grandchildren grow up in the Moon Light, where memorabilia harking to days of Elvis, astronauts and muscle cars line the walls.

One of the Hameds' grandsons, 8-year-old Landon Hamed, recently went to space camp at Kennedy Space Center.

His grandmother sees burgeoning energy and relishes the Space Coast's link to the past and future.

"There were children from all over the country who sent their kids there ... Alaska, New York," Hamed said.

"There's such a renewed interest in space for children, this generation, I  think, more than the previous one ... it's wonderful."

Theodis Ray

Theodis Ray's grandmother passed away just after Ray's February 1968 return from Vietnam.

He was 23 that year. He moved into his grandma's house in Titusville, where, a little more than a year later, he would watch the first moon walk on television. 

"Everybody was watching that night. Seeing those images ... incredible," he said. 

It hadn't been an easy year for Ray, 1968. The assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had wounded his soul. Ray had hoped to be a state trooper after his service but was told "point-blank," he said, that his race would keep him out of the running in Brevard at the time.

Racial tension and concern over the plight of the poor was high, complete with an anti-poverty march at Gate 3 of the Kennedy Space Center complex as prep for Apollo 11 was in motion.

Ray had worked at the Space Center back in 1963, at 19, as a janitor. He lasted just a few months, he said, before joining the U.S. Marines in 1964. He saw cases of discrimination against people of color at NASA, he said, recalling a black man with a doctorate who was a janitor, too.

But after his return from Vietnam, Ray signed on again at the Space Center, working his way up to logistics lead for United Launch Alliance.

He met astronauts as they made their way to be suited up — "I had a chance to meet and greet astronauts from 1968 to 2004," he said.

He saw people he had trained over the years move on to even better jobs and took pride in their accomplishments.

And the moon walk?

"It energized us," Ray said. "You know, it was such a futuristic thing at that time, and we had all our energy focused on that."

Ray, the father of four, retired in 2000. He and his wife of 49 years, Ann, have 11 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Now on launch days, he stands in his yard on Knox McRae Boulevard and looks eastward instead of "dealing with traffic." He marvels at the ingenuity of Elon Musk and laughs out loud about the SpaceX founder blasting a $100,000 Tesla automobile into the solar system as payload, aboard the first Falcon Heavy rocket.

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"That car flying through space — can you imagine this guy's mind? The ingenuity of that? Who'd have thought of that ... this guy's brilliant," he said.

And like other Brevard residents who remember what it was like to live in a world before rockets carried Roadsters, Ray thinks it's important to share the kind of spirit that propelled man to the moon and beyond.

"It's in our blood," he said.

"We can't give that up. I tell people all the time, tell your story. Continue to dream. Never give up. The sky's the limit — share that with your kids and grandkids."

Contact Kennerly at 321-242-3692 or bkennerly@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @bybrittkennerly or at Facebook.com/bybrittkennerly.