BRIELLE -- Edwin E, Aldrin Sr. said today that the fateful touchdown of the four-legged module carrying his son to me moon made him "nervous" but the rest was only "part of a routine."
The father of Apollo 11 astronaut Col. Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. added: "It's hard to believe it's true."
Like most Americans, the retired Air Force colonel refused to budge from the television set during the televised exploration of the moon Sunday night by his son and civilian astronaut Neil A. Armstrong.
Even the telephone went unanswered during the night until well past the moonwalk which ended at 1:07 a.m. today.
"I don't think I was nervous once they set it down in the right place and sat it upright," Aldrin said this morning. "That was the important thing and the other things seemed to be just part of a routine."
The peppery 73-year-old Aldrin, whose decades-long aviation career included the first trans-Atlantic trip on the dirigible Hindenburg, called his own exploits "low-key" in comparison to those of his son.
He classed his son's achievements as "outside of this world in a class."
"I dealt with Atlantic flights and round-the-world flights -- that's low-key in comparison."
Aldrin said he expected to see his son in mid-August, because "he has a lot to go through."
"They've got to get all they can out of these boys."
"Buzz" Aldrin was reared in Montclair, N.J., and the elder Aldrin moved here at the time of the death of his wife, the former Marion Moon. The elder Aldrin requested the Brielle police department to post a guard at his house, according to an officer on duty.
"This is all private property," he told a newsman who approached him. He said he was under strict orders to admit no one.
