Photo courtesy of Anna Goodman ’28
Photos of, from left to right, Anna’s grandparents in 1969, Anna’s grandmother and her mom in 1989, and Anna’s grandmother with Anna herself in 2019.
By Anna Goodman ’28
Staff Writer
It's about 10 p.m. on July 20, 1969, and my grandparents, who had just turned 20, are watching TV. Normally at this time of night they’d be watching the Ed Sullivan Show or listening to Creedence Clearwater on the radio –– if my grandfather had his way –– but not tonight. Instead, they’re watching some very fuzzy footage broadcast from over 200,000 miles away. They’re watching history be made through a screen.
We all know this story, right? “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?” You’re rolling your eyes already. You’re flipping your paper over to the interesting things in the Horoscopes section. You’re wondering: Why am I wasting your time?
So, instead of talking about this, let’s talk about you. What is “history” to you?
“I’d define history as a particular memory ... what people remember to be the past. As a student of history, sometimes I think of it as an academic way to understand the lives we’re living right now,” Asmi Shrestha ’26 says.
Or, as Sophia Baldwin ’26 puts it, “[History is] a collection of events from the past that we remember and pass down from generation to generation.”
For Mila Marinova ’27, history is “all of the past events and people and their actions that have led to where we are now.”
“[It’s] both something very personal and a collective phenomenon. It’s generational too, it depends on what’s shared from grandparents to parents to children. It depends on what’s taught in schools, in science and English and history classes. It depends on personal interpretation too,” Sophia Hoermann ’25 says.
Many of the interviewees talked of their first “historical memory,” ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the 2008 financial crash to the fall of the monarchy in Nepal.
My grandmother, it seems, had her pick. In 1969, a man walked on the moon, the Vietnam War became more unpopular than ever, the Woodstock music festival drew crowds of thousands, and the Stonewall Uprising birthed the modern queer rights movement. And all of those generation-defining moments happened in the span of less than two months.
And so, after asking how each person would define history, I asked another question: Can you name three people involved in the moon landing? No one could do it. Most could name was Neil Armstrong — or “Neil” or “Armstrong” — but the closest anyone came was one and a half people.
It’s fascinating that here we are, with people who clearly think deeply about history and gave all different yet all detailed and introspective answers to the question of how to define it — who could likely all recite the line, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” from memory — and yet the name of the person whose step it was eluded them.
It’s fascinating that so often, when we think of Big Moments In History, we forget about the people behind them. Things don’t just happen. People make them happen. People made Stonewall and Woodstock happen. And as for the people who made the moon landing happen –– besides thousands of engineers and mathematicians and geologists, not to mention those in mission control or landing crew –– the names of the three astronauts from Apollo 11 were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
So, it’s about 10 p.m. on Nov. 5, 2024, and I, having just turned 18, am watching TV. Normally at this time of night I’d be watching Netflix, or, to be honest, cramming over an assignment, but not tonight. Instead I’m ten years old again, remembering my own first historical memory, feeling just as horrified and just as powerless. I’m watching history through a screen.
Because 77 million people voted for Trump. My grandfather voted for Trump. Buzz Aldrin endorsed him. Because of people like him, we landed on the moon. Because of people like him, all of our lives are in danger.
You all know this story, right? You’re really wishing you turned to the Horoscopes section ten minutes ago. But before you roll your eyes, know that I’m not going to tell this story. I’m going to tell a different one.
My grandmother was three months past 20 when she watched a man walk on the moon. My grandmother was three weeks away from succumbing to Stage 4 lung cancer when she signed her ballot for Joe Biden in 2020 with an “X.” She watched history be made and was determined to make it until the bitter end, determined that she would make a better future even if she couldn’t be part of it.
And maybe you don’t want to make history. You’re exhausted. You’re terrified. You just want to pass chemistry and not think about the looming threats to healthcare or the constant school shootings in the news. And that’s not your fault; it shouldn’t be dependent on a bunch of teenagers and 20-something sleep-deprived college students to try to keep themselves alive when the people in charge of our country seem committed to watching us die.
But we don’t have the luxury of watching any longer. We don’t have the time to deliberate on whether we want to be here. The fact is, the time for deliberation was months ago and the choice has been made. The fact is, here we are.
The question is, what are we going to do about it?
I’ve mentioned many responses to “What is history?” but not my own. So, for the record, I, Anna Cocca Goodman ’28, say that history is change. History is the bridge from the past to the future, and the people who carry it on their shoulders, forgotten or celebrated, from Neil Armstrong, to protestors at Stonewall, to journalists far better than me.
My grandmother did not live to see a world where Trump was not president. But I will. I will survive the men who walked on the moon, I will survive the queer ancestors who fought for me at Stonewall, and I will survive the last vestiges of Donald Trump’s regime, not on a screen, but with my own eyes.
It’s about 10 p.m. on April 16, 2025, what would be my grandmother’s 76th birthday, when I decide to write this article. When I decide to say that I hope you will be there when we land on the moon again. I hope you will be there when we see authoritarianism crumble again. I hope you will be here, now, when we need you, when we have the chance to make both of those things happen.
So, please, don’t go. And, please, whatever history means to you, come and make it with me.
Leah Dutcher ’28 contributed fact-checking.