Armstrong was the Magellan of the stars

Aug. 25, 2012, will go down as the day we lost Neil Armstrong, a modern-day Magellan to set out among the stars, an explorer not of the seas, nor a spot on the earth or air, but the first human being to set foot on another world: the moon.

Now there has been a great deal written about Armstrong since his passing — about his personal history, his record-setting flights in the X-15 rocket plane and the Gemini 8 orbital mission that nearly killed him and his copilot. Before that, of his Korean war time record of more than 78 combat missions.

I want to write about how he affected one 8-year-boy, because that mission alone took all of us along for the ride. It took all of humanity from the realm of science fiction to the reality of historical fact, and the world was changed forever. It is how a great many of us remember him best. I was that 8-year-old boy the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

My family had just moved up to Bath, Ohio, that summer from Louisiana two months prior. It was a small town smack dab in between Cleveland and Akron. We were invited by my mother’s cousin Joan to watch the landing at her home in Millis, Mass. We didn’t know at the time she had a special guest waiting for us.

So, we packed up the VW bug with the two dogs, three kids and both our parents for the trip.

Mom drove, my elder sisters Debbi and Donna rode in the back seat with the dogs, Sally the large black Lab and Mandy the poodle that didn’t know she was one. She was a black-and-white spotted mop. Then there was little me, who took up residence in the cubbyhole tucked in the rear.

My dad found out his job was to be navigator, with some help from us kids that is. I think he was stunned to learn that each of us could read maps as good as any adult, maybe even better. This was how we grew up — traveling from state to state following our dad from sales region to sales region every year or so. Most moves were in that tiny, blue VW Bug. By the time we did this little jaunt, we had a good working system of travel. You know, I think we blew dad’s mind on that trip.

We started out that morning of the 19th. I forget just how long it took to get there. We bounced and jittered in that little bug down the highway, both dogs had stuck their noses out the side windows. The car radio, like nearly all stations back then, was giving constant updates on the mission. The nation had a major case of “moon fever,” and none of us were immune. We arrived at our cousin’s home the next day within an hour or two before the decent and landing. It was then she unveiled her little surprise.

I forget his name. Honestly, it has been more than 40 years, so I will call him Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was a technician for Grumman aircraft. The big surprise was the he helped build the Lunar Excursion Module or LEM. Walter Cronkite had his tech experts and now we had ours.

So we all sat down in the living room with red brick walls, light brown shag carpet and what seemed to me a zillion Hummel figurines on every shelf in the place. The adults were in chairs and all of us kids, including my 5-year-old cousin Steven, on the floor in front of the TV. It was one of those huge console RCA models with wood trim. We tuned into CBS and Walter Cronkite just in time for the first stages of the decent of the LEM called “Eagle” to its date with destiny. All the TV networks were running coverage, all three of them ,plus the local station.

Mr. Smith saw that I had a paper cutout model of the LEM. One of the national gas station chains put them out. We got them on the way over there. Mr. Smith used it to show us just what the astronauts were doing. We were impressed by his knowledge and pride in the spacecraft he helped to build. Then the first alarm codes were beamed back by Buzz Aldrin and Neil. He turned a shade or two pale. We all became glued to the tube.

Then there was the call “beep … 60 seconds …”

Mr. Smith turned nearly white. I asked what that meant. He looked down at me smiling weakly, “That means they have only 60 seconds of fuel left on board.”

My little jaw dropped. There was now dead silence in the room. Only the grainy pictures, the voices of the astronauts and that of Mission Control filled the room. Every once in a while a deeply worried Walter Cronkite would pop up on the screen. I think everyone was holding their breath.

“Beep … OK down, left … 15 seconds … contact lights,” came the calls. “Beep ... engine stop.”

There was a pause.

Then the words that changed the world rang out: “Beep. Tranqulity Base here, the Eagle has landed.” Everyone on the air, at mission control and the millions of people at home went nuts. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even Walter Cronkite had them as the news ticker below his image flashed: “Apollo 11 has landed on the moon” over and over. We could all breathe again.

Mr. Smith sat back in his chair just shy of passing out.

“He landed that thing on fumes,” I heard him mutter. My sisters and I were grinning from ear to ear. My little cousin didn’t quite get it, but went along with all the hubbub.

We had to wait impatiently more than a few hours until the hatch was opened. Little Steven had to go to bed, but us older kids were allowed to stay up. Then the first grainy black-and-white pictures showing a blurry image of a suited up astronaut as he hitched his way down the ladder on one of the LEM’s legs appeared on the screen. It was Neil Armstrong.

He seemed to pause for moment. Then with a hop, he set his feet on another world. After a few seconds he uttered those words that still ring out fresh in my mind to this day.

“That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”

And we all cheered, cried and just plain went ape. We were all witnesses to one of the greatest events in human history. We watched the entire EVA that took place before us on the surface in glorious black and white, well past our bedtimes. You couldn’t have dragged me away with a team of horses even if you tried. Hours later, Buzz and Neil went back inside their tiny craft and the rest of us down on earth reluctantly did the same.

We left the next day, I think. I don’t remember much of the trip back, but I do remember this profound thought as I looked up into the daytime sky to the moon hanging above us. The thought was simply this: before the landing we on Earth could only dream of men on the moon. It was the realm of fictional stories and conceptual art. Now we woke up in the era of the reality that man has walked there on its surface, and we were witnesses to it.

This was pretty good considering it came from an 8-year-old kid. That thought has been with me ever since that fateful day. This is how I remember Neil Armstrong best. That entire experience made me a bigger fan of everything space related that has stuck with me to this day.

Now Buzz and Neil are just two out of the 12 people to have walked on the moon. No one has gone beyond the orbit of the Earth since those heady days. That must change if we are to truly honor Neil Armstrong and those who followed him in the era of Apollo.

We must return to the moon and go beyond to Mars, not just with machines, but with men and women of courage. Not for a few days, either. We must go there for weeks, months and even years. We must make these places our new homes to the expanding cause of humanity to claim first our neighboring planets and, in the later generations that must follow, the very stars themselves.

I admit the last line is a very tall order. I will leave you with these words by another who helped pave the way for us to reach the moon, another hero of my childhood taken from us all far too soon by the thoughtless actions of an assassin’s bullet.

“We choose to go to the moon,” President John F. Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.