Flying in to Sleeping Indian Ranch, near the Continental Divide, was, in very different ways, about as challenging as landing Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility. “My mountain landing strip was pretty tight—you could only fly in one way and you had to fly out the other. So, Neil showed up in his Bonanza with his family, and I was flagging him in wearing my cowboy outfit. I could just see his wife’s hand just waving and shaking, all hysterical like. It was quite a trip in to the place!
“We gave them the whole top floor. It was just a rough little ranch, but it was gorgeous country. We were loaded with game—bear and deer—with a stream full of trout, and Neil enjoyed that. I took him and his boys up in the high country, where we saw bands of elk.
“Me and my wife kept absolutely still about it. If we had ever talked [to the neighbors], they would have ripped the thing right open. We took him into town for dinner and never let anybody know. People didn’t recognize him. I remember a cop stopped us in the car—he pulled me over for making a wrong turn or something. He didn’t notice it was Neil in there, and we never let on for a second.”
A week of near-total relaxation in Colorado’s mountain air bolstered Neil and Janet mentally and physically for the incredibly frenetic schedule to come. It began in Wapakoneta, where the good people of Armstrong’s hometown were not about to be left out of the national celebration. The town’s big day came—as it did for the residents of Montclair, New Jersey, Buzz’s hometown, and of New Orleans, Mike’s adopted hometown—on Saturday, September 6, 1969.
Wapakoneta’s was by the far the largest of the hometown events. Area newspaper headlines previewed Neil’s return: “Moonwalker Coming Home to Wapak,” “Wapakoneta Bursting at the Seams,” and “Wapak Wild! Hot Dogs Selling 3 for $1.” More than five hundred police officers were brought in. Service stations ran out of gasoline. A local movie theater stayed open all night free of charge to give visitors a place to rest as they awaited the festivities. With Cleveland native Bob Hope serving as the parade’s grand marshal (along with his wife Delores) and other special guests including TV star Ed McMahon and Dr. Albert B. Sabin, the developer of the oral polio vaccine, the arriving crowd numbered in excess of ten times that of the town’s normal 7,000 population. (That compared to 15,000 that attended the Wapakoneta parade following Neil’s Gemini VIII mission.) Neil’s Purdue University Marching Band with its Golden Girl provided music. Ohio governor James Rhodes, whose attendance was prominent (overly so, in the view of some locals), sent one of his aides to help coordinate plans to the best advantage of Columbus.
The small town was wrapped almost entirely in red, white, and blue bunting. Streets along the parade route were renamed for their favorite son—“Lift-Off Lane,” “Apollo Drive,” “Eagle Boulevard”—in the tradition of “Neil Armstrong Drive,” site of the senior Armstrongs’ residence. Downtown headquarters, directed by Charles Brading Jr., the son of Neil’s boyhood employer, welcomed visitors (and some 350 credentialed journalists) to “Tranquility Base.” Heading the Neil Armstrong Homecoming VIP Committee was Fred Fisher, Neil’s boyhood friend whose little sister was Neil’s first Karen.
To this day, locals recall the events to minute detail. Ned Keiber remembers, “We, his classmates, didn’t get to see the parade because we had to go out to the county fairground. It was tough because we were sitting in ninety-degree heat. When the parade arrived, we made two lines so when Neil got out of his car, we acted like security. He walked between our two lines, as did Bob Hope and Neil’s mother and dad. Neil’s dad shook hands with every single one of us. The whole parade just stopped and backed everything up. I never forgot that.”
Bob Hope kept the crowd in stitches, Neil’s good friend Arthur Frame remembered prior to his passing in 2003. “One of Hope’s jokes was about how well Neil had adjusted since returning from space: ‘But he keeps throwing his shoes out the window and eating his toothpaste.’” In another joke, addressed to Janet Armstrong, Hope quipped, “It must be tough to sleep with a man who keeps murmuring ‘Buzz, Buzz.’”
Alma Lou-Shaw Kuffner, Neil’s prom date, remembers that Neil, in addressing the crowd, was not nearly as stiff as he had been during his Gemini VIII homecoming, “Everyone wanted him to spout these great words of wisdom.”
The Brading family drugstore, with young Neil Armstrong’s signature on one of its interior walls, was a prime media destination. Charles Brading’s executive homecoming committee presented Neil with a town roll mounted on a board from a cross-cut oak table donated by Grandma Korspeter. Governor Rhodes announced—though Neil himself had yet to be consulted—that the State of Ohio would be moving forward with plans to build a Neil Armstrong Museum in Wapakoneta.
Neil took it all in very good humor, content to repeat what he had told them during his visit back in 1966, “I’m proud to stand before you today and consider myself one of you.” Then, to the delight of his mostly Ohio audience, he added that though news reports indicated that he and Buzz had not found anything “organic” on the lunar surface, “I think you know better now. There was a Buckeye on the Moon.”
From Wapakoneta Neil and Janet flew to Washington, leaving the boys with Neil’s parents. On Monday the ninth of September they attended NASA’s Apollo 11 Splashdown Party at the Shoreham Hotel, preceded by the formal unveiling at the U.S. Post Department of the commemorative Moon landing stamp, the ten-cent stamp that Neil and Buzz canceled after they got back into Columbia on July 22. The following week the Armstrongs returned to Washington, where the Apollo 11 crew was to be honored at a midday joint session of Congress. Promptly at noon, the astronauts were led by a bipartisan delegation up to seats on the Speaker’s rostrum. Following a long and loud standing ovation, Armstrong stepped first to the microphone:
“Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of Congress, distinguished guests:
“We are greatly honored that you have invited us here today. Only now have we completed our journey to land on and explore the Moon and return. It was here in these halls that our venture really began. Here the Space Act of 1958 was framed, the chartering document of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And here in the years that followed the key decisions that permitted the successive steps of Mercury and Gemini and Apollo were made.
“Your policies and the marvels of modern communication have permitted people around the world to share the excitement of our exploration. And, although you have been informed of the results of Apollo 11, we are particularly pleased to have this opportunity to complete our work by reporting to you and through you to the American people. My colleagues share the honor of presenting this report.”
Neil then introduced Buzz, followed by Mike, to the great chamber. After their remarks, he took the podium to offer the crew’s final thoughts:
“We landed on the Sea of Tranquility in the cool of the early lunar morning, when the long shadows would aid our perception. The Sun was only ten degrees above the horizon. While the Earth turned through nearly a full day during our stay, the Sun at Tranquility Base rose barely eleven degrees—a small fraction of the monthlong lunar day. There was a peculiar sensation of the duality of time—the swift rush of events that characterizes all our lives—and the ponderous parade which marks the aging of the universe.
“Both kinds of time were evident—the first by the routine events of the flight, whose planning and execution were detailed to fractions of a second—the latter by rocks around us, unchanged throughout the history of man—whose three-billion-year-old secrets made them the treasure we sought.
“The plaque on the Eagle which summarized our hopes bears this message: ‘Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.’
“Those nineteen hundred and sixty-nine years had constituted the majority of the Age of Pisces, a twelfth of the great year that is measured by the thousand generations the precession of the Earth’s axis requires to scribe a giant circle in the heavens.
“In the next twenty centuri
es, the Age of Aquarius of the great year, the age for which our young people have such high hopes, humanity may begin to understand its most baffling mystery: Where are we going?
“The Earth is, in fact, traveling many thousands of miles per hour in the direction of the constellation Hercules—to some unknown destination in the cosmos. Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny.
“Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations?
“Science has not mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.
“Several weeks ago I enjoyed the warmth of reflection on the true meanings of the spirit of Apollo. I stood in the highlands of this nation, near the Continental Divide, introducing to my sons the wonders of nature, and pleasures of looking for deer and for elk. In their enthusiasm for the view, they frequently stumbled on the rocky trails, but when they looked only to their footing, they did not see the elk.
“To those of you who have advocated looking high, we owe our sincere gratitude, for you have granted us the opportunity to see some of the grandest views of the Creator. To those of you who have been our honest critics, we also thank, for you have reminded us that we dare not forget to watch the trail.
“We carried on Apollo 11 two flags of this Union that had flown over the Capital, one over the House of Representatives, one over the Senate. It is our privilege to return them now in these halls which exemplify man’s highest purpose—to serve one’s fellow man.
“We thank you on behalf of all the men of Apollo, for giving us the privilege of joining you in serving—for all mankind.”
With thunderous applause, the U.S. Congress seemed poised to vote strong support for the future of the space program. That was not to be.
Instead, the astronauts were treated to a nadir of political influence. Standing in the Senate cloakroom prior to their appearance before the joint session, the three had decided to make a quick bathroom stop. The heroic crew of Apollo 11 were occupied at urinals when Democratic congressman L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a key supporter of the space program, approached, pen and commemorative stamped envelopes in hand. Aldrin remembers, “We zipped up, lined up, signed our sincerest greetings, and returned to the cloakroom. Neil looked annoyed. Mike’s face was red with embarrassment, and I was shaking my head in disbelief.”
Immediately following their speeches, the trio was confronted with seven cameras and a complex of small lights manned by a grinning Japanese photographer charged with creating three-dimensional portraits in light and shadow. Unbeknownst to the astronauts, the Japanese embassy had commissioned busts of each one of the astronauts, statues that would be presented to the astronauts when they visited Japan during their forthcoming around-the-world tour in October.
Following the photo shoot, the wives and families of congressmen awaited the astronauts’ narration of Apollo 11. Remembers Aldrin, “No one had previously mentioned this to any of us. My reaction was tempered by my elation of the moment, but both Mike and Neil were justifiably furious.” Buzz recalls, “We raised hell” with NASA Headquarters for letting the session run for over two hours.
The next morning’s State Department briefing afforded the crew’s first details on their impending world tour of a minimum of twenty-three countries in forty-five days. Logistics of travel aboard Air Force Two would be managed by a “support team” of six PR officers from the space agency, a White House representative, two men from the United States Information Agency, two secretaries, a doctor, a baggage man, two full-time security officers, a photographer-cameraman, plus four men from the Voice of America.
The astronauts ranked their stated objective “to demonstrate goodwill to all people in the world and to stress that what we had done was for all mankind,” over State Department and NASA agendas “to visit the American embassies anxious to score social coups.” “We would take care of Americans in America,” they insisted at the briefing.
The tour called “Giant Step” pledged to go “around the world to emphasize the willingness of the United States to share its space knowledge.” The trip would kick off from Houston on September 29, then travel to Mexico City, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Grand Canary Island, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Oslo, Cologne, Berlin, London, Rome, Belgrade, Ankara, Kinshasa (Congo), Tehran, Bombay, Dacca, Bangkok, Darwin (Australia), Sydney, Guam, Seoul, Tokyo, Honolulu, and back to Houston.
Neil did not keep a diary of the trip as George Low had for the Latin American tour three years earlier, but he did tape-record a travelogue.
On October 8 in Paris, France, Neil reported, “A representative of the Aero Club of France gave us their gold medal, which had previously only been given to the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh from America and it had been given to no other crews from spaceflights. I responded with some remarks concerning recollection of that welcome by Charles Lindbergh.”
Janet, who herself had “a wonderful trip” representing her country, has a particularly distinct memory of the visit to Belgium and the Netherlands, regarding meeting the two kings and two queens in one day: “That was really something. We had lunch with one and dinner with the next one. We were told you were never supposed to turn your back on a king or a queen. Well, Mike Collins got caught in a situation in Belgium where the king was ahead of him and the queen was behind him and Mike was in between and so he had to sidestep up twenty-five or thirty stairs in the palace. He was just so good about it. We all joked about that later.” On the way back to the hotel, Collins reportedly said, “I think I broke my goddamn ankle!”
Attendance at a “typical press conference” numbered, as it did in Cologne and Bonn, Germany, on October 12, “a thousand or more people.” The next day in Berlin assembled “an extremely large crowd estimated as two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand, but I expect it to be probably closer to a million. We proceeded upstairs to a gigantic reception for a thousand people. There was so many people and it was so poorly controlled that we detoured into a side room, waved to the assembled crowd from the balcony along with the mayor, and began our escape.”
On October 14 in London, England, he noted, “We had canceled our two scheduled TV programs, with BBC and an independent network, and did only the press conference on television. Because of colds and laryngitis…. All the press reports [led] with our bleary eyes and sore throats.”
About the cancellation of the television programs in London, Neil today recalls: “That ruffled a few feathers, but we had to keep from getting absolutely worn into the ground, and I thought we were getting there. I thought it was irresponsible to ask us to be on television for three hours,” Aldrin remembers that Dr. Bill Carpentier “was conned into going on television” to state that the astronauts were “exhausted.” It was “the only way out of big trouble” with the British TV networks.
One incident from the Congo on October 22–23 that Armstrong decided not to comment on in his journal was an embarrassing moment at the evening ball when Aldrin jumped from the dais and cut in on Miss Congo, who was dancing with her escort. Buzz later described what happened: “The bandleader noticed and picked up a faster beat. The dancers all moved back to watch. Neil, it turned out, disapproved of my obviously spontaneous participation. Nick Ruhe [from NASA public affairs] and [the State Department’s] Bill Der Bung…thought it was a genuine and honest move. The newspapers loved it. Neil subsequently came around.” Today Neil comments: “Some people would say that was great and others would say that it wasn’t. That was one occasion when some people questioned whether that
was really the right thing to be doing. I don’t know myself whether it was really good or not. I wouldn’t have done it, but I can’t say that it was wrong to have done it.”
It was not the only incident during the tour involving Aldrin, as he himself admitted in his autobiography. As early as the stop in Bogotá, Dr. Carpentier had prescribed anti-anxiety pills for Buzz. One night in Norway Buzz felt so depressed he had stayed in his room all evening while all the others, including his wife, went out to dinner. Buzz wrote that this was the only night of the trip that he drank too much, but the problem for him was “there was liquor everywhere,” “bottles of scotch or gin in every hotel room, a jug of mimosas on the breakfast tray every morning.” In Rome, attending “an elegant party right out of La Dolce Vita at Gina Lollobrigida’s,” minus Joan, Buzz did not return to their hotel room until after dawn and was “in the doghouse” for the rest of the day. Later, in Iran, the couple had “one of the more memorable fights” of their marriage; Buzz remembers, “I was informed either begin to stay at home more or plan to move out.”
Both Collins and Armstrong knew that something serious was bothering their crewmate. “The trip produced some disturbing symptoms in Buzz,” Mike has written, “causing him to withdraw into stony-faced silence from time to time,” resulting in “obvious stress” to Joan. Neil today remembers different indications of an onset of depression but “wasn’t smart enough to recognize the problem…. It bothered me then, and bothers me now, that I wasn’t up to the job. I’ve thought to myself, Had I been more observant or more attentive, I might have noted something that could have helped Buzz’s situation, and I failed to do that. It was sometime after the tour that he started having real problems.”
Whether any of Buzz’s depression was a carryover from how he felt about Neil being deemed the first man on the Moon is unclear, but there is no question that the situation still grated on him—and on his father. Back at the ceremonial unveiling of the ten-cent Apollo 11 stamp at the U.S. Post Office building in Washington just a few weeks earlier, Buzz had been chagrined to see that the stamp, which showed Neil stepping down onto the lunar surface, bore the caption “First Man on the Moon.” Aldrin recalled in his autobiography, “Lord knows what prompted the caption under the stamp, but it caused me to feel rather useless and it positively infuriated my father…‘Men’ would have been more accurate, and I must confess, my feelings were hurt.”
First Man Page 71