Northbrook man revisits a great moment in history
Even three miles away Dr. Marvin Rubenstein felt the heat from the engines. He felt his clothes rippling on that July day in 1969.
Those who read his book might feel it, too.
The Northbrook man's memoir, "Apollo Memories," is about growing up on the South Side of Chicago during the turbulent 1960s. It's about the growing interest in aviation and manned space flight he shared with a buddy. And, in the book's second half, it's about the launch of Apollo 11, to which they were witness.
"You know something unbelievable is going to happen, you just don't know what," Rubenstein said while recounting the events surrounding the July 16, 1969, Saturn V rocket launch that enabled Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to be the first men on the moon while pilot Michael Collins flew in lunar orbit.
A cancer researcher with 300 publications to his credit, plus two patents in molecular biology for prostate and breast cancer treatments, Rubenstein once applied to NASA, having written a grant proposal on separating proteins in zero-gravity environments.
As for "Apollo Memories," he wrote his first draft 20 years ago, then set it down. After reading "I Was a Teenage Space Reporter" by David Chudwin - Rubenstein's friend for decades who accompanied him at the launch of Apollo 11 at Cape Kennedy in Florida - Rubenstein unearthed his draft.
"Trying to convert a 3-inch floppy disk was a major accomplishment in its own right," he said.
"I just kept adding and adding to it, and it became a 100-page book, then it became a 300-page book," he said.
As published it's at 200 pages and uses his own photographs and some taken by his late wife, Janet, to whom he dedicates his book.
"Apollo Memories" is available at Northbrook's Book Bin and through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle eBooks and several Chicago-area college bookstores, including Rush Medical College, where Rubenstein is a volunteer in the admissions department.
The book was nominated for a 2020 prize from Space Hipster, a Facebook group of more than 19,000 space exploration enthusiasts. Rubenstein was scheduled to sign copies of it in July at Spacefest in Tucson, Arizona, but now must wait until 2021 due to the coronavirus.
Incoming sophomores at the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Michigan, respectively, Rubenstein and Chudwin drew the first press credentials awarded by NASA to college students, Rubenstein said.
"We had the same privileges as Walter Cronkite," he said.
A distant cousin of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Rubenstein writes of his early interest in speed records, the Air Force Thunderbirds, Project Gemini, of Alan Shepard becoming the first American to travel into space. The people he encounters in Florida are striking, as well.
He'd met astronauts before and since - Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell among them - but in Florida he also was able to interview Dr. George Mueller, head of the Office of Manned Space Flight. He refused to shake the hand of Dr. Wehrner von Braun, a genius in rocket engineering, but also a former member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer.
Rubenstein and Chudwin toured the Vertical Assembly Building and rode an elevator to the top of Apollo 12, the second to land on the moon. They awoke at 4:30 a.m. July 16 to see Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins wave as they made their trek to the transfer van.
From the press site in Cocoa Beach, about three miles away from the cape, Rubenstein felt the thrust of 160 million horsepower.
"We were just far enough away that if something happened we would probably be OK," he said.
Rubenstein, who turns 70 on Sept. 3, looks forward to the next chapter of space flight.
"I want to see people go to Mars," he said.
Those press credentials will be a tough get, but Rubenstein has earned it.
"I won't be the youngest one, that's for sure."