He had been at the top of that pyramid, but there had been nothing foreordained in his becoming the commander of the first moon landing or becoming the first man out onto the lunar surface. Neil had been a foremost member of the team that achieved humankind's first forays into deep space - and he always emphasized the teamwork of the 400,000 Americans instrumental to Apollo's success. At his feet is the handle for the sample collection tool. Armstrong is pictured here, shortly after collecting a sample of lunar dust and rocks. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. It was in Neil's mild and modest personality to avoid publicity and keep to the real business of the engineering and piloting profession he had chosen he was simply not the sort of man ever to seek what he felt was undeserved profit from his name or reputation. Neil was quite adamant that he didn't want the story in his biography, and I tell it now, after his death, with some reluctance.Īs for the first moon landing 18 years later, no human being could have handled the bright glare of international fame or the instant transformation into a historic and cultural icon better than Neil. They themselves would have all fired their guns, they admitted, but there was something too honorable in Neil for him to kill men who were in no position to defend themselves. No one else in his fighter squadron that I interviewed ever heard the story, because Neil never told it, but they accepted it without hesitation as true. As Neil told me, "It looked like they were having a rough enough time doing their morning exercises." He could have mowed them down with machine-gun fire, but he chose to take his finger off the trigger and fly on. Passing over a ridge of low mountains in his F9F Panther jet, Neil saw laid out before him rows and rows of North Korean soldiers, unarmed, doing their daily calisthenics outside their field barracks. One story that Neil told me that he never told anyone else concerned a flight he took over North Korea while on a dawn combat patrol in 1951. Don't just ask his fellow astronauts ask his naval aviator crewmates in Fighter Squadron 51, where as a young man barely 20 years old, he not only flew 78 combat missions over North Korea, but showed extraordinary levels of commitment, dedication, dependability, a thirst for knowledge, self-confidence, toughness, decisiveness, honesty, innovation, loyalty, positive attitude, self-respect, respect for others, integrity, self-reliance, prudence, judiciousness and much more. Getting to know Neil, I never forgot the heroic aspects of who he was and what he had achieved - how could I? But Neil was such a good and honorable person that the icon quickly retreated to the back of my mind, and I appreciated him, and the remarkable life he led, for so many other very good reasons, most of them related to his basic humanity.Īll his life, in whatever he did, Neil personified the essential qualities and core values of a superlative human being. The biggest compliment he gave me after the book came out was that I wrote exactly the type of book that I told him I would write. It certainly didn't hurt that he believed he could trust me. Also, it seemed to me crucially important to Neil that I wasn't out to sensationalize his career or personal life and that I appreciated what engineers do (and how they do it) and the technical side of his lifelong - not just his spaceflight - achievements. We were also both offspring of mothers and fathers whose families had made their livings by farming. We were both Midwesterners, with ways of speaking and manners of socially interacting that were very familiar to one another. As to Neil's reasoning for deciding to participate actively in my project by giving me access to his papers, allowing me some 55 hours for tape-recorded interviews, and sending me more than 600 informative emails, I can only speculate: I came into his life at the right time. Why Armstrong chose me, a university history professor, to write his life story is a question I never dared ask him yet it's been one of the most asked questions of me ever since " First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, Apollo 11 Commander, inside the Lunar Module as it rests on the lunar surface after completion of his historic moonwalk in July 1969.