The Man on the Moon

            I’m sorry Neil Armstrong will not live to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of his footsteps on the moon. He missed it by seven years.

            Neil Armstrong, for me, is not simply a photo in the history books or in the newspapers. He is a living being inside my mind. I can ever yet see him as a 39-year-old in 1969 flying to and from the moon. The memory is indistinguishable from my ninth birthday party of that year. That’s because in a way, I participated in both.

            My dad bought our first color TV a few days before the launch of Apollo 11 in July, 1969. It was summer, so I watched almost every moment of the CBS telecast of the mission.

            Perhaps, because I was a child, what seemed so incomprehensible to adults seemed so comprehensible to me. A chorale group from an orphans’ home was singing at our church that weekend; at an afternoon reception, everyone stopped and watched as a portable TV was brought out and NBC announced that the EAGLE had landed.

            Later that night, my parents, our houseguests, and I watched in wonder and fascination as Neil Armstrong descended from the ladder of the lunar module… and then he was on the moon.

            At some point in the two-hour plus spacewalk of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, I fell asleep. I awoke during the historic phone call from President Richard Nixon to the astronauts.

            Observing this conversation in my post-nap haze seemed dreamlike. Perhaps that is the best word to describe the Apollo 11 mission—dreamlike. For centuries humans aspired to travel to the moon, but that night four decades ago, the dream was fulfilled. And I was there.

            I consider it a privilege to experience my childhood during the sixties. I owe Neil Armstrong a debt for taking me along with him on his incredible voyage.

            In the ensuing years after his moonwalk, critics would chastise Armstrong for not viewing his space event more romantically. He never claimed to be a poet; he was simply an engineer. Ironically, in the minds of succeeding generations, the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" form one of the most poetic sentences ever uttered.

            Twice Armstrong faced close calls in space. Once, nearly spinning to his death in Gemini 8, and the second time, coming without seconds of running out of fuel landing the lunar module on the moon. In both cases, his cool, analytical, engineer’s brain manufactured solutions to his life-threatening problems. Nevertheless, Armstrong was no unfeeling automaton.

            Several years ago, I read James Hansen’s excellent biography of Neil Armstrong, FIRST MAN. In his book, Hansen peels away the layers of the complex man to reveal not only a gifted, rational thinker, but also a husband and father with feelings and emotions. Here is how I put it in a post I wrote in 2009:  

         One of the interesting aspects of Armstrong's life that this book [FIRST MAN] reveals is the tender heart that he had for his daughter, Karen. She died as a child of a brain tumor [in the early 1960s]. The event shattered Armstrong emotionally, and he never fully recovered.

            [After Karen’s death and] after the successful Apollo 11 spaceflight, the mission's astronauts toured the world. While in London, England, crowds mobbed the astronauts.

            At a barrier, which separated the astronauts from the people, a little girl found herself pressed against the obstruction. Frightened, she began to cry.

            Armstrong picked up the girl, hugged her, soothed her emotions with kind words, and kissed her. An enterprising photographer snapped the picture and newspapers around the world ran it.

            The press noted that this intimacy was out of character for Armstrong and were puzzled by this display. Hansen writes that it was no coincidence. The girl was the age of Armstrong's daughter when Karen had passed away.

             

            Rest in peace, Neil Armstrong.

Photo courtesy of NASA.gov