Note: article was originally published by the author at Talk of Titusville.
Sixty-four years ago, the United States launched its first human being aboard a rocket. It was a tense time politically, and space flight was the new political football of the Cold War. The country’s pride had been injured by the Soviet Union’s accomplishing space feats before the US, but that day — May 5, 1961 — it was a day that restored pride and confidence in America’s capabilities as a nation. And it all happened here, of course, on the Space Coast.
Given that newspapers were leading source of coverage at that time, here’s a look at how one local writer covered the story.
Tales have been told uncounted times of the flight from Alan Shepard and top NASA officials’ points of view. But what about the locals? How did they see this flight? Talk of Titusville dug back into the local evening newspapers of the time, The Cocoa Tribune and the Orlando Evening Star.
Stories in both newspapers spoke of how nearly everyone in Cocoa, Titusville and all the beaches more or less stopped what they were doing to watch the launch ascending from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. AM Radio was the preferred way to keep up with events for those watching in person, and the local stations were all too happy to provide moment by moment coverage.
Doug Dederer, One Of The First Local Reporters Covering Space
Newspaperman Doug Dederer set the scene for his coverage, which would be published the same day in the Cocoa Tribune. “Bobbing in a small craft a few hundred yards offshore myself and my companions waited patiently for the countdown to reach zero, Dederer began. “Our only communications were local radio stations who, at minus ten minutes, gave a running description of activities as reported at the press site.”
“I watched the missile belch smoke and flame in its tail. It appeared to hover over the pad, then steadily the pulsing engines, gulping tons of fuel and liquid oxygen in seconds, lifted the Mercury spacecraft higher and higher.”
“At launch,” Dederer said, “The tremendous surge of feeling, compounded by thousands of written words, hundreds of interviews and a score of months knowing this and the other astronauts burst loose.”
“Tears flowed unashemedly and I didn’t care,” he stated bluntly.
Those feelings have been repeated many, many times since then, probably with every crewed launch that has flown from the Cape. In a time when crewed launches seem routine, they never are and there is always someone who is seeing it all unfold for the first time. Tears of happiness flowed that day, and they will again, as soon as the next crewed launch.
Dederer’s vision cleared in time for him to note, “The sea was surprisingly calm after the week’s stormy weather and one could easily read “United States” on the 83-foot long rocket.”
“The Redstone arched slighly on the east-northeast heading over the coastline and over our seaborne position,” Dederer said. “It passed overhead at 4,000 feet bathed in the brilliance of a new sun and a new era in American spacemanship.”
It may be safe to venture a guess that watching that liftoff made bobbing on the water offshore from Cape Canaveral worthwhile.
Dederer went on to write for Today, now Florida Today. He also ran his own publication, the Surfside Slant, in Cocoa Beach. Sadly, he passed away in 1985 at the age of 58.
Around Town
Back onshore and across the rivers in Cocoa, business had come to a standstill to watch the liftoff. The Tribune reported that “Employees – and bosses — of businesses suspended operation when radions reported the final countdown began to conquer their excitement and return to the normal routine of their daily lives.”
The Tribune further reported “crowds of people” gathered along the Indian River to watch, though it was not clear exactly where on the river that was. Today, launches from the Cape are best seen from southern Titusville or from the beaches of the Banana River and Cape Canaveral, and back then couldn’t have been any different.
One thing was clear, however: something truly historical and extraordinary had happened that day in 1961, and those who were there to see it in person realized that from the start.
Perhaps the Orlando Evening Star put things best in its coverage from the day: “True, the Russians’ Yuri beat him to it but that erases no of the glory from Alan Shepard. And his fellow countrymen are no less proud.”
