It’s funny how when you see something often enough, you never forget it — even decades since the last time you saw that thing. For me, one of those things is my grandfather giving the “OK” or “go ahead” point of his finger. He did it whenever we left his house when I was a little kid, and I saw him do it to others. He gave it to me and to my cousins when we rode bicycles.

I saw this old video, “Biography of a Missile” that was made for CBS television back in the early days of rocket science: the goal at the time were long range missiles and the race to get them working and reliable in service of America’s self-defense. It was an all-out effort with nearly as many failures as launches. As the title suggests, it was the story of one such missile, culminating in its launch and liftoff.

It’s a little thing, something someone else would never notice: there he was, V.L. Pinson, Sr., in the 1950s, giving that same finger point. I laughed when I saw that, and it also made me proud. I’d grown up hearing his stories about this time in rocket history, but there he was, front and center, just for a second.

To be clear, my grandfather was not one of the cognoscenti of ABMA or NASA…he was an electrical engineer who ran the telemetry unit — a group of engineers responsible for the radio contact through the missile’s flight. He preferred to be in the background, seen but not heard, doing his job. So, seeing him is a rare treat.

If you want to see the whole video (and it’s worth the time to watch) here’s a link to a copy on YouTube: