By DAN SOKIL

Staff Writer

UPPER GWYNEDD — Forty years to the day after men landed on the moon, Cas Workman wrote the first draft of a poem:

July 1969

Science Class

Cape Kennedy

Predawn gathering on the beach

Across the bay

Saturn V Rocket

Looked 1 inch high

flash of flames

roar begins

scary hesitation

trembling ground

earth rocking rumble

liftoff, sweet relief

French spectators

sang our National Anthem

goosebumps

tears

so much pride

the whole world is watching

one small step.

Her writing was part of Monday’s lesson she taught to the Young Writers/Young Readers summer camp, but the memories are all hers.

That’s because four decades ago she was known as Carol A. Schreiber (Cas is a nickname that comes from those initials) and watched the launch of Apollo 11 right across a bay from the launch site thanks to her involvement in a NASA seminar earlier that summer.

“I remember the trembling ground, and the rocket was so far away it looked only 1 inch tall,” said Workman.

“Then we saw a flash and heard the noise, but it was scary because they fired the engines and for a few seconds we didn’t see it move. I got a little scared about that, but then it started to go up and they were on their way,” she said.

Just like that, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were on their way to the moon, a mission Workman said still brings back chills whenever she thinks about it.

“The only other time in 40 years I’ve had that same feeling was

watching President Obama’s inauguration, because they were both such great moments for America,” she said.

“We were all so excited and just completely overwhelmed. There was a delegation from France standing behind us on the beach, and after the launch they started singing our national anthem with their French accents; I’m getting goosebumps right now just thinking about it,” said Workman.

The launch, early on the morning of Wednesday, July 16, 1969, was the highlight of a week she and her fellow teachers spent in Florida, touring the Kennedy Space Center and watching progress reports.

By the time Apollo 11’s crew landed on the moon, she had already returned to Hatfield, and watched the landing on TV with her future husband, Chuck Workman, and an estimated billion other viewers worldwide.

“Mr. Workman was my boyfriend at the time, and he and I watched the moonwalk together in Ocean City, New Jersey; all these years later we’re still together, and he’s still kind of jealous that I was in Florida by myself that week,” she said.

If ever a couple lived happily ever after, it’s those two: she and Chuck married in 1970, raised two daughters who attended North Penn’s schools before heading off to college, and Cas spent 35 years teaching in several North Penn schools before retiring in 2002.

“I started teaching at E.B. Laudenslager in 1967, and went from there to teach at Hatfield, then (J. Henry) Specht, to (A.M.) Kulp and then ended up teaching at Walton Farm before I retired,” Workman said.

In fact, she remembers helping work out the transition between E.B. Laudenslager and Hatfield before the latter school opened in 1972.

“We had all of these books in the library that we had to move from one school to the other, so I said, ‘Why don’t we give each of the kids a stack of books to carry?’ They loved it, and really felt a sense of ownership when we moved in,” said Workman.

You can still see her around the district from time to time, like at Gwyn-Nor for the next two weeks, where she’s the site coordinator for the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project’s Young Writers/Young Readers program.

There, her students wrote Monday about their memories of growing up, and their teacher shared a few of her own from that unforgettable morning 40 years ago.