A woman who lives in Greensboro is reflecting on her time working for the NASA Space Program ahead of the 50th anniversary of human beings landing on the Moon.Geneva Barnes, who goes by Gennie, was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She moved to Washington, DC when she was 17 years old. There, she worked as a secretary and stenographer for the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Navy Department and the Pentagon in the Office to the Judge Advocate General. During that time, she wanted to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA’s engineering headquarters were nearby her place of work.“I wanted to work there and I thought that they were going to do something new and they did,” said Barnes.“NASA headquarters was just down the street from where I was working so I walked down there one day on my lunch hour and asked if they were hiring,”“They gave me dictation and I took it just like good secretaries do and this one guy wrote on the top of the letter that I was carrying around with me, ‘Hire this woman.’ “About two days later they called me and said, ‘You’re in.’”Barnes started as a secretary in the Engineering Department of NASA before transferring to the Public Affairs Department, where she would stay for most of her 35-year career with the space agency. She remembers being excited during the Apollo 11 launch. Her assignment for the launch was at the launch site, the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. She says that was an exciting time, but she also remembers being worried for the astronauts.“I didn’t cry or anything at the time but I was just worried that they might not come back,” Barnes said.When the three astronauts returned home, she was assigned to travel with them on their World Tour. During this tour, she served among a select group of support staff who accompanied the Apollo 11 astronauts and their wives on a whirlwind presidential international goodwill mission following their successful Moon landing. From September 29 through November 5, 1969, project "Giantstep" traveled aboard the vice president's plane visiting 22 countries in 38 days.She recalls taking dictation for Neil Armstrong during that time and describing how she was starstruck the first time she did that for him:“He stopped to thinking what he wanted to say and I looked up at him and it was the first time I looked at him, really face to face, and I sort of lost track of what he was saying and when I got back to transcribe it, I couldn’t remember, my little jiggly things, I couldn’t read them, so I put in my own words of what I thought he would be saying and when he signed the letters, he called me back into the airplane, he called me back and as he was signing his letters he said, ‘I don’t remember saying this stuff.’ And I said, ‘Oh, but you must, it’s in my book.’ I was scared to death. But he signed it,” said Barnes.“I really thought, an Oklahoma farm girl sitting here taking dictation from the first man who went to the moon.”Barnes retired from NASA in 1996 and then served as a volunteer at the White House. She lived in Silver Spring, Maryland until 2005, when she moved to Greensboro to be closer to her daughter. Barnes has a daughter and two sons.She says she doesn’t think about or reflect on the fact that she played a role in mankind’s greatest accomplishment.“I liked my job. I was busy doing what I liked.”Barnes says now, she hopes humans can land on Mars as soon as possible.