There is an experiential gulf among baby boomers, those who remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and those who do not.

I fit in the latter camp.

I was barely a year old when Kennedy was slain. Growing up, I would learn a lot about the man because of my grandfather's profound devotion to him. They were both Navy men and Democrats, after all. Had he not been assassinated, the American people would have changed the Constitution to allow him to serve more than two terms in office, my grandfather was wont to say.

My "memories" of JFK are my grandfather's, and that's fine. But they're not the same quality of my own memories, my own interpretations of world events.

One such memory was that of the Apollo 11 mission, and of course Neil Armstrong walking on and planting the American flag on the moon.

I was 6 years old. Politics aside, I found it utterly remarkable that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had set foot on the very same moon that illuminated our night sky.

I vividly remember the elevated mood of the nation, which had been beaten down by assassinations, civil rights struggles and the Vietnam War. The moon landing was a galvanizing moment ?— a time when we dared to believe that anything was possible.

We drank Tang and ate Space Sticks, just like the astronauts, although we now know the link between Tang and NASA was somewhat exaggerated.

There were "space rocks" and "moon boots" for sale, and countless products purportedly developed for the space program made their way into our homes.

Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins were national heroes — the rock stars of the cosmos, decades before the term was coined.

It was 40 years ago. It was interesting to me that the man who made space exploration accessible to the rest of us — CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite — died a few days before the anniversary.

Cronkite was the stuff of my first independent memories of these events. No matter the time of the rocket launches or a mission's safe return to Earth, my mother would make sure my brothers and I were awake to watch it on television. She understood the significance of these events, both in terms of science but also with respect to the Cold War.

Television was our window to this brave new world and Cronkite was our tour guide.

Cronkite called America's conquest of space "one of the great stories of the 20th century."

It's interesting, four decades after the fact, to revisit the news footage of the moon landing. At one point, Cronkite calls on his sidekick, NASA astronaut Wally Schirra, to fill in the silence as the lunar module lands on the moon. "Wally, say something, I'm speechless," Cronkite said.