Total Solar Eclipse of March 7, 1970. My father, William H. Menke Sr, drove our family down to Virginia Beach, Virginia, on the morning of March 7. My friend and classmate, Victor Baltera, accompanied us. We crossed the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel-Bridge and arrived about 11Am. We set up our cameras and a pinhole observation device in a little park along the main road, which had a few picnic tables. Mr. Steven Lander, our science teacher from East Rockaway High School, was viewing the eclipse, too, and had coincidentally chosen the same park. The day was perfectly clear - great for viewing the sky. We watched the moon slowly work its way across the face of the sun. The sky stayed bright until the last few minutes before totality. We saw the diamond-ring effect and then Bailey's Beads and also a phenomenon where shadows rippled along the ground around us. Totality occurred at 12:56 PM and lasted about three minutes. The sky became dark, although the horizon was still shining a little, as at dawn. Mr. Lander said that he saw a bat fly by. We could see the sun's chromosphere very well. The planet Venus, which was near the sun, was also visible. We left soon after totality ended, though we watched the end of the eclipse from the car window as we drove back to New York.

This note was written by me, William H. Menke Jr, on May 12, 2010. I recently found the slides that I had taken during the eclipse and scanned them. Although forty years have passed since the eclipse, my memory of it is still very clear. It was a very formative event in my early life.