The passing of Neil Armstrong comes as a shock. Surely the first human to set foot on another celestial body would never succumb to something as predictable and inevitable as mortality? But succumb he did, last Saturday (August 25), from complications following cardiovascular procedures. His 82 years of age are also a reminder of how long ago Apollo 11 placed Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon, on July 20, 1969, while Michael Collins kept the ride home circling the block overhead.
This 14-year-old British lad watched on TV in the school physics lab as the events of that memorable day unfolded a quarter of a million miles away. In the Old Country, Brits tended to regard “The Americans” with boundless admiration for their forte at pulling off whatever they set their mind to, including World War II, but with a tinge of envy at the contrast between their rising fortunes and the withering Great British Empire. Neil Armstrong was the human at the tip of the spear symbolizing that Americans could achieve anything; the mighty Saturn V that carried him and his colleagues to the moon epitomized America’s staggering aerospace know-how; and then there was Mary Tyler Moore, on whom I had a big crush. Ten years later I was on a BA 747, heading west over the Atlantic to New York, with two suitcases and a few dollars in my pocket, emigrating to this fascinating land, powerhouse of the aviation universe. Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, for what you and the thousands of NASA people who sent you to the moon did to tell the world who America is.
