Despite his intimate involvement with the first moon landing, Bexley resident Herb Brownstein has avoided taking part in any 50th anniversary commemorations.

“I’m hesitant to go to the organizations that are having programs because I don’t want to be a critic," Brownstein said. “They would say something, and I would know that wasn’t exactly the way it happened.”

He certainly would know, as he was one of only 10 people who had the power to postpone the Apollo 11 launch during the last 10 seconds before liftoff.

As the assistant to the director of space medicine at NASA, Brownstein was a member of the launch operations team.

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On July 16, 1969, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, as the countdown commenced, each team member was assigned a final-10 number.

If, when their number was called anything was wrong in their area of responsibility, they could say “hold.” Of course, all 10, including Brownstein said, “go” and the rocket roared into space.

At that point, once the rocket cleared the tower, the launch control team’s job was done and the mission control team took over.

So Brownstein packed up the car and the four family members who had come down to witness the launch and drove back to his home in suburban Washington, D.C.

There, he watched the July 20 moon landing on television like everybody else.

“I didn’t recognize it as a big milestone until I got back and everybody was watching it,” said Brownstein, now 99. He calls the launch “the apex of my career.”

Born in 1920 in Syracuse, New York, Brownstein was an engineer with the Army Air Corps (later the Air Force). He joined NASA’s manned space flight program in 1962.

His job with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs was basically to serve as a project manager for the environmental control systems team, making sure the astronauts’ food and space suits, among other things, were ready and delivered on time.

Herb and Sylvia Brownstein moved to a Bexley retirement community in 2006. His wife died in 2012.

In 1969, while Brownstein was in the launch-control bunker watching on a television monitor, Sylvia, sons Barry and Scott, and Barry’s wife, Linda, watched from a viewing area for NASA employees’ families that was much closer than the public was allowed.

Barry Brownstein, a Clintonville resident, recalls the visceral feeling when the rocket roared to life.

“It was loud, but sort of a low-frequency,” he said. “I remember having a shirt with buttons on it, and the buttons rattled against your chest.”

kgordon@dispatch.com

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