In July of 1969, a four-year-old boy was taken outside by his father. His father pointed up at the moon and told the little boy that for the first time ever, somebody was up there.
While my real-time memories of the Apollo program are blurred in the past and recorded by a boy not old enough to recognize the significance, they are very real. Images from Apollo 11 through Apollo 17 are blended together, being one long thing. Men landing on the moon happened all the time for a boy who was 7 when man left the moon and never returned.
I do recall watching the live television coverage pretty regularly, and that’s probably what sparked my interest in the sciences. As an early teenager, my parents bought me a copy of this book.
I devoured it in a few days. In fact, I still have it.
Of course, I gravitated to other kids who enjoyed the same things. To us, Neil Armstrong was bigger than the Beatles ever were, bigger than Elvis ever was, and bigger than Stan Lee of Marvel Comics (which is saying a lot).
Pretty much everyone liked Neil Armstrong, who represented everything good about life, about the United States, and about the sciences. People like Armstrong are far too rare. He did something the rest of us could only dream about, and we still do .
But Armstrong was always modest. The only reason he stepped on the moon first was because somebody had to be first. His immortal words, words that we know so well I don’t have to repeat them, made it clear that he was a proxy for us all. We all stepped on the moon that day, even that four-year-old in the back yard.
Icons from our childhood should never have to die. For me, some of these are John Lennon, Carl Sagan, Jacques Cousteau, Marlin Perkins, Fred Rogers, Louis Armstrong, and, of course, Neil Armstrong. It reminds us of our own mortality.
While I am saddened by the passing of Neil Armstrong, I am comforted by what must have been great satisfaction in his mind. He was an engineer, a scientist, an educator, and an all-round classy individual.
And you know what? After all he did to influence my generation to take up the sciences, to educate the general public, and to advocate for NASA, I don’t mind at all if his final thoughts went something like this: “I have no regrets. I was the first man to set foot on the moon, and that’s the coolest thing any person has ever done, ever.”
But, I suspect along with that thought came another one. That one went something like this: “Twelve is not enough. Please go back.”
Goodbye, Neil Armstrong. Rest in peace.
