While people all over the United States were celebrating the 40th anniversary of man’s walk on the moon, I was lucky enough to attend a luncheon of friends and neighbors honoring one of the people instrumental in that mission. Organized by my high school friend Peggy, the luncheon was a gathering of neighbors and friends here to visit her father.

Peggy, her sister Nancy and father Paul were in town from various locales for an Apollo reunion at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha. As far as I can tell, few people know a lot of work for the space missions was done right here in Wisconsin.

Peggy’s dad worked for GM. I knew he did something with space, but being a teenager, I didn’t know exactly what it was and didn’t ask. The family lived in Elm Grove. On their family room walls were actual photos of Titan missiles launching, Apollo lift-offs, and various awards. While I was impressed with this display, we didn’t really discuss it a lot. Not because it wasn’t important, but the family just didn’t boast a lot about these things. I did know her dad did something with the “moon buggy” and the family would go down to Florida and join others to watch lift-offs from a boat out in the ocean, breaking out the champagne once the lift-off was successful. When Peggy would tell us about it at school, we’d all clamor “coooool”.

40 years later, I learned that there are many men and women from Wisconsin who worked at General Motors Corporation/Delco Electronics. They have gotten together every five years since, alternating between here and Santa Barbara, California. These people developed many of the technologies in use today—including the “moon buggy”, actually called the Lunar Rover. I remember Peggy’s dad had those blueprints on their kitchen table. At the luncheon, I overheard someone say her sister thought it was a go-cart when she saw them. Not so farfetched! I also found out today that her dad developed the technology that ended up replacing navigators on air flights (job elimination is a continuum when progress is being made); received a presidential commendation for his efforts in procedures for bringing the Apollo 13 safely home; led the development of the Lunar Rover, and led all GM’s missile and space avionic programs and its mass transportation division.

In my haste to get there on time, I forgot my camera. Forced to use my iPhone (which is OK) I took pictures of the displays these former GM workers, now many of them in their 80’s, had on display outside the Grand Ballroom where that evenings banquet was to take place. Once again, it felt like I was in Peggy’s family room, looking at photos of history being made, but no one was really making a big deal about it. It seems like the people of Wisconsin should at least know about this.

Undoubtedly, there are blueprints of more great projects on the kitchen tables of other unrecognized people. But we’ll probably never find out.