I remember the summer of 1969.

I was five years old and bound for kindergarten in the fall.

By June I had suffered my first significant sports injury. I was catching a pickup game in the neighborhood and caught a split lip when the batter threw my first Louisville Slugger.

I remember well that event in the summer of 1969 because I drank milkshakes for two days.

And I remember gathering with my family to watch Apollo 11 landing on the moon, a live transmission from the moon to our television set.

My parents told me the moon landing would change the world, would change my life in ways I could not imagine.

I don’t remember anyone that summer mentioning Stonewall or that the riots outside that New York club would change the world, would change lives, would change my life in ways I could not imagine.

My parents probably saw a news report that Judy Garland had died, but they probably did not hear or read the short reports about the six nights of rioting. They were a long way from Greenwich Village and a current issue of The New York Times or Village Voice.

My parents, like many young Midwestern parents living on tomato soup and tuna casserole in their first suburban home, probably would not have quite grasped the meaning of the headline in the New York Daily News — “Homo nest raided. Queen bees are stinging mad.”

Stonewall took about 15 years or more to impact me and my family, but the event, with its long-lasting after-shocks, did influence my life in far more ways than Apollo 11’s landing on the moon.

When I came out, I came out into a community that, forged in Stonewall, had rioted and rebelled, protested and pushed, marched and rallied at capitols in most states and on the National Mall.

When I came out, I came out into a community that, following Stonewall, felt liberated and proclaimed pride. Think about Allen Ginsberg’s comment about the gay men he saw on Christopher Street after Stonewall — “They’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.”

When I came out, I came out to friends and family aware and awakened by the modern movement that Stonewall spurred.

From Stonewall came gay power and from gay power came gay pride. And from gay pride the community learned to use its power, to build influence, to force change — social change, cultural change, political change.

Now, years after coming out, I realize the Stonewall riots even made possible my day-to-day domestic tranquility —though not yet equality — that my partner and I enjoy with our neighbors and co-workers.

Perhaps the most rebellious of readers might think this a sad comment, but I realize too that Stonewall helped pave the way for young gay Midwestern parents to start out like my parents — to be living happily in the summer of 2009 on tomato soup and tuna casserole and raising their 5-year-old daughter in their first suburban home.

My memories of 1969 are of baseball and new sneakers for school, learning to never talk to strangers and watching a goofy new show about “The Brady Bunch,” and finding my way to North Elementary School and thinking about walking on the moon.

My memories of 1969 are not of the Stonewall riots, or news of the riots, or talk of the riots. Years would pass before I would hear of Stonewall and even then I had to struggle to understand the concept of police harassment — because Stonewall had already forced some reform.

Stonewall is nowhere in my child’s memory of 1969, but Stonewall, that event that went unnoticed in the small Neff household that year, changed my life and the lives of so many others born then and born after.

Thank you, Stonewall generation.

And happy pride.