First Man

by James R. Hansen

  I also want to thank Neil’s current wife, Carol Held Knight Armstrong, for the interview she granted me and for the generous and caring hospitality she showed me every time I visited the Armstrong home. Meeting Carol’s charming daughter Molly Knight-VanWagenen and her two little ones was icing on the cake. I cannot say how delightful the sight was of Molly’s beautiful blond daughter sitting contentedly on Grandpa Neil’s lap.

  A host of historians, librarians, archivists, curators, and other research professionals at various institutions helped enormously with my research. Notable among them, and deserving special thanks, were Dr. Michael Gorn, chief historian of NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, as well as Mike’s staff historians Dr. Curtis Peebles and Dr. Christian Gelzer and archivist Peter Merlin; Dr. J. D. Hunley, former NASA Dryden historian; Stephen Garber and Jane Odom of the NASA Headquarters History Office; Shelly Kelly, Anna B. Peebler, and Regina Grant of the University of Houston–Clear Lake Archives and NASA Johnson Space Center History Program; Rebecca Wright of Signal/Veridian, the director of NASA Johnson Space Center’s Oral History Project; Kent Carter, regional director of the National Archives and Records Administration—Southwest Region in Fort Worth, TX, and his director of archival operations Meg Hacker; Bill Hooper and Pamela T. Wilson at the Research Center of Time Inc., in New York City, as well as Time Inc.’s Richard Stolley; John Zwez, former director of the Neil A. Armstrong Museum in Wapakoneta, OH; M. Hill Goodspeed, historian at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, FL; Christy Haas, archives technician at the Military Personnel Records section of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO; Garland Gouger, reference librarian at NASA Langley Research Center’s Floyd L. Thompson Memorial Technical Library in Hampton, VA; Bonita Smith of Indyne, Inc., the contract historian at John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, OH; Jane Carlin, head of the University Libraries at the University of Cincinnati; M. Jo Derryberry, director of the Auglaize County Library in Wapakoneta; and Elizabeth Bringman, head of the Upper Sandusky (OH) Community Library.

  Dr. Roger D. Launius, former NASA chief historian in Washington, DC, and current chair of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, helped me get this project started, and Dr. Tom D. Crouch of the museum’s Department of Aeronautics offered guidance at various points along the way. The author of the definitive biography of the Wright brothers, my friend and fellow Ohio State graduate Tom Crouch, would himself have made a great Armstrong biographer. I also am indebted to Andrew Chaikin, author of the outstanding 1994 book A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (the basis for the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon), for his assistance and encouragement. Dr. Douglas G. Brinkley, who in the company of the late Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose in September 2001 conducted a lengthy interview with Armstrong, provided moral support. Support from Neil Thompson, author of the 2004 biography Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, also meant a lot to me. Dr. Stephen Waring of the University of Alabama-Hunstville history department shed significant light on Armstrong’s critically important role in the Space Shuttle Challenger investigation.

  Without the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal assembled over the course of many years by its editor Eric P. Jones, my understanding of what happened on the Sea of Tranquility during the Apollo 11 mission would have been much less informed and precise. I want to thank Eric for his great support of my project and particularly for his keen reading of my draft chapters relevant to the first landing. He saved me from making several major errors. Those that remain are my own.

  The founder and editor of the Web site collectSPACE.com, Robert Pearlman, provided a number of important insights into space history and the popular fascination with astronauts and space memorabilia. My incessant e-mail questions to him about such details as the contents of the astronauts’ PPKs could not have been answered more promptly or completely.

  I also want to thank Hank Brandli, Michael Esslinger, Barbara Honegger, Neil McAleer, James McDade, Anthony Pizzitola, Herman A. Spanagel, and Roger Weiss for their letters and e-mails and for the historical materials they so generously provided me. My old friend and former editor Steve Corneliussen of Poquoson, VA, offered his usual provocative critique of the book’s early chapters.

  The officers and gentlemen of Fighter Squadron 51 deserve special mention for what they contributed to this book. As a group, not even the Apollo astronauts that I interviewed were more impressive to me. Special thanks go Ted Rickelton of Seattle, WA, the brother of Ensign Glenn H. “Rick” Rickelton, as well as to Rick’s nephews, Glenn Rickelton of Elk Grove, CA, and Scott Rickelton of Bothell, WA, for the family’s permission to quote from Ensign Rickelton’s diary. I also greatly appreciate Robert Kaps’s permission to quote from his Korean War journal. VF-51’s Ken “K.C.” Kramer supplied a ton of useful information and insights about the history of the fighter squadron. Besides sending me a huge collection of pertinent materials, Ken read and commented extensively on the draft chapters related to Neil’s time in the navy. Also providing very helpful comments and criticism of those chapters were VF-51’s Ernest M. Beauchamp, Hershel Gott, and Wam Mackey. William Holloway, a close friend of VF-51’s James J. Ashford, also offered a penetrating review of those chapters. I wish to thank Bill Holloway also for freely sharing his manuscript account of the life of his friend Jim Ashford, one of the VF-51 aviators, like Rickelton, who was killed in Korea.

  Without the support I received from my academic home, Auburn University, I could never have produced this book in a timely fashion. For the original agreement to give me the necessary time away from full-time teaching, I wish to thank former university provost Dr. John Pritchett, Vice President for Research Dr. Michael Moriarty, former deans of the college of liberal arts, Dr. John Heilman and Dr. Rebekah Pindzola, former associate dean Dr. Anthony Carey, and chair of the history department Dr. William Trimble. All of my colleagues are due my thanks for indulging my passion for my subject and my long absences from their company. In particular I wish to acknowledge the support of my fellow faculty in our Technology and Civilization program, especially Dr. Guy V. Beckwith and Dr. W. David Lewis. Auburn’s eminent British history specialist Professor Daniel Szechi aided me greatly in understanding the fascinating history of the Scottish Borders.

  My doctoral students never let me give up on the idea of writing the Armstrong biography. The Three Amigos—David Arnold, Amy E. Foster, and Kristen Starr—kept cheering me on even when I had given up most hope that the project would work out. David and Amy have gone on to complete excellent PhDs in space history, and Kristen is not far behind. Nor is Andrew Baird, a late addition to the coterie. I expect never to have a more able or stimulating group of graduate students. I also want to thank the countless undergraduate students I have enjoyed teaching in our freshman Technology and Civilization survey and in my courses in aerospace history.

  An Auburn undergraduate student, Molly Prickett, amazingly transcribed over seventy-five of my interviews for this book. Anyone who has ever toiled to produce verbatim transcripts from tape-recorded interviews understands how tedious and time-consuming it all is. Fortunately, no one loves space history or the U.S. space program more than Molly. Auburn history graduate student David Burke also transcribed a few of the interviews. So, too, did my sister, Carol Lynn Busse. If ever a sister was more wonderful than June Armstrong, it was our family’s cherished Carol.

  Simon & Schuster’s marvelous Denise Roy has done so many wonderful things for this book, I don’t know where to begin to praise her. Denise adroitly trimmed an overly long (and frequently overwritten) manuscript into something as lean and readable as anyone could have possibly made it. Her consummate professionalism and always friendly and constructive words of encouragement inspired me to keep working for our book’s improvement. She has spoiled me from wanting to ever work with another editor.

  Prior to initiating this project, I never thought I would need, or want
, a literary agent. I had no idea how to get one and could have made a bad decision. Instead, I found a kindred spirit and an angel in the intellectually radiant and spiritually magical form of Laurie Fox of the Linda Chester Agency. Every minute of my work on this book would have been worthwhile even if their only result had been becoming Laurie’s friend. Laurie’s husband, D. Patrick Miller, a talented and accomplished author in his own right, as Laurie herself is, also shared a number of helpful ideas. So, too, did the majestic Linda Chester herself. I also want to thank Justin Manask and Joel Gotler of Intellectual Property Group.

  My immediate family “lived” this book almost as much as I did. Many times at dinner, as I sat stone silent or dazed, my mind still spinning with that day’s thoughts about Armstrong’s life, my wife Peggy, daughter Jennifer, and son Nathan would have to reel me in and bring me back down to Earth. But I never felt anything but their loving support for what I was doing. I am so happy that both of my children have found equivalent passions in their own lives—art history for twenty-one-year-old Jennifer and medicine for twenty-six-year-old Nathan. But I hope even more that they find partners and have children as loving, interested, and tolerant in them as three-dimensional human beings as they have been of their father.

  Finally, I thank you, the reader, for investing in such a big book and, hopefully, reading it from first page to last. For you, for posterity, and for Neil, I have given it my absolute best.

  —James R. Hansen

  Auburn, AL

  April 2005

  Notes

  Abbreviations Used

  vii I: E Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living.

  Prologue

  “missed the whole thing” BA quoted in Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon, p. 227.

  “numero uno spot” JSA to author, Park City, UT, Sept. 11, 2004 (morning), p. 27.

  “anyone sneezes on the Moon” “Borman: Why Cancel Out Nixon?” Akron Beacon Journal, July 13, 1969.

  “lunar-crazy” Dutch comment quoted in “Europe, Too, Is Awaiting the Launch of Apollo 11,” NYT, July 16, 1969.

  “the America we love” Czech comment quoted in ibid.

  “12 percent of the entire Moon output is ‘made in Germany’” German comment quoted in ibid.

  “greatest adventure in the history of humanity” French comment quoted in “Foreign Press Hails Apollo Mission,” TB, July 17, 1969.

  “country whose people are so tired of politics” French comment quoted in “Europe, Too, Is Awaiting,” NYT, July 16, 1969.

  “three courageous men” Pravda comment quoted in “Foreign Press Hails,” TB, July 17, 1969.

  “extend imperialism into space” Communist newspaper comment from Hong Kong quoted in ibid.

  “What is there in thee, moon” John Keats quoted in John Noble Wilford, WeReach the Moon, p. 17.

  “worth all the heat and mosquitoes” Quoted in Lacey Fosburgh, “Hundreds of Thousands Flock to Be ‘There,’” NYT, July 16, 1969.

  “new era in the life of man” Quoted in Bernard Weinraub, “Some Applaud as Rocket Lifts, But Rest Just Stare,” NYT, July 17, 1969.

  “the kindling light to put men together” Quoted in Weinraub, ibid.

  “Incroyable!” Shriver quoted in “The VIP Guests Can Hardly Find Words,” NYT, July 17, 1969.

  “the poetry of hope” Hale Broun quoted in CBS, 10:56:20 P.M., p. 21.

  “America’s inability to choose the proper priorities” Hosea Williams quoted in “‘Priorities’ Under Fire,” LN, July 15, 1969.

  “holy ground” Abernathy quoted in CBS, 10:56:20 P.M., pp. 15–16.

  “so much that we have yet to do” LBJ quoted in “Johnson Hails National Effort Behind Apollo 11,” NYT, July 17, 1969. A fuller citation of LBJ’s remarks can be found in CBS, 10:56:20 P.M., pp. 19–20.

  “not a carnival atmosphere” Sevareid quoted in CBS, 10:56:20 P.M., pp. 13–14.

  “pressure might be too great” VEAP, “Apollo 11, 1969,” Part 3:1.

  “never was there a prayer like this one” Ibid.

  “besieged by newsmen of every category” VEAP, “Looking Back,” p. 7.

  “survived this only by the grace of God” VEAP, “Apollo 11, 1969,” Part 3:1.

  “welcomed with open arms” Ibid., Part 3:3.

  “call us again before you leave?” Ibid., Part 3:4.

  “feel somone squeezing your hand these days” Ibid.

  “Janet, too, was full of cheerfulness” VEAP, “Apollo 11, 1969,” Part 3:4.

  “Stephen and I sat side by side” Ibid., Part 3:6.

  Part One: An American Genesis

  E VEAP, “Our Armstrong Family,” p. 4.

  E NAA, “What America Means to Me,” The Reader’s Digest (Apr. 15, 1975), pp. 75–76.

  Chapter 1: The Strong of Arm

  “loved every last one” “Neil Armstrong’s kinsman was hanged as a thief,” Life, Mar. 24, 1972; “Neil Armstrong Spared Hanging in Scotland,” CE, Mar. 3,1972.

  Armstrong name began illustriously The primary source used for the early history of the Armstrongs in Scotland is James L. Armstrong, Chronicles of theArmstrongs (Salem, MA: Higginson Book Co., 1902).

  emerged as a powerful force Technically, it is inaccurate to call the Armstrongs a “clan,” a designation reserved for Gaels from the Gaeltacht, that is, Highlanders, with a recognized chieftain-based dynasty thought to be descended from the heroes of the Celtic past and with customs and traditions of governance, law, and society all of their own.

  By contrast the “Names” of the Lowlands, like the Armstrongs, were more volatile associations, with few permanently recognized chieftain dynasties, which were organized on a feudal and personal basis rather than on the Gaeltacht’s mix of custom and myths of common ancestry.

  Unfortunately, this has not stopped modern descendants of these families from calling themselves a “clan.” In fact, members of the Armstrong family—most all of them American tourists—took advantage of the occasion of Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing in July 1969 to establish an organization at Mangerton in Liddesdale, Scotland, known as the Armstrong Clan Society. Spinning off from this organization in the past thirty-plus years has been an Armstrong Genealogy and History Center, Clan Armstrong Trust, and a number of dedicated Internet Web sites.

  “Elliots and Armstrongs never fail” VEAP: “Our Armstrong Family,” p. 1.

  “very ill to tame” Quotes in this paragraph come from by far the most reliable history of the Anglo-Scottish Border reivers, Fraser, Steel Bonnets, p. 57.

  Scott identified…“Christie’s Will” The entirety of Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” is available online at the Web site of the Edinburgh University Library: www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/poetry/minstrelsy.htm

  Conveniently, Christie’s Will VEAP: Letter, Historical Research Associates, Co. Antrim, N. Ireland, to Mrs. Stephen Armstrong, Wapakoneta, OH, Feb. 3,1986. This letter is part of a correspondence sequence between Historial Research Associates and Viola Armstrong.

  Militia muster rolls for Ulster “Fermanagh Muster Rolls c. 1630,” part of an Irish genealogy Web site called From Ireland, administered by Jane Lyons, Dublin, Ireland: www.from-ireland.net/censussubs/fermanmust1630.htm. See also “Ulster Ancestry: From the Muster Rolls of the County of Fermanagh, 1631,” at www.ulsterancestry.com/muster-roll1663.html.

  Mary Forster Forster (Forrester, Foster) was another one of the large Borderland reiver families. Although found more often on the English than the Scottish side, Forsters from both sides of the boundary intermarried. Sir John Forster (d. 1602) served over nearly four decades as the warden of the Middle March. The dates here are correct: he lived to be over one hundred years old. The lineage between Sir John Foster and Adam Armstrong’s wife Mary Forster (born 1685) is unknown. Perhaps she was a granddaughter. If so, it would suggest a significant linkage between the Forster and Armstrong families.

  “first white child” Leckey, Tenmile Country, pp. 538–39.

&n
bsp; “most delightful country” Comment made by Christopher Gist, on his survey for the Ohio Company in 1750. On Gist’s exploration of the Ohio Country, see Buck and Buck, The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania, pp. 63, 66, 71, 72, 75.

  ninety cents H. G. Howland, ed., 1880 Atlas of Auglaize County (Columbus, OH: Robert Sutton, 1880). Tax lists are also available online at www.roots web.com/~ohauglai/genweb/twp10.htm.

  Jacobus J. Van Nuys Following the Civil War, one of the descendants of the Van Nuys family, Isaac Van Nuys, helped lay the foundation for what became the town of Van Nuys, California, north of Los Angeles. Members of today’s Armstrong family believe, based on their genealogical research, that Isaac (1826–1884) may be directly related to Jacobus Van Nuys, the grandfather of Margaret Van Nuys’s Stephen Armstrong.

  grandfather Van Nuys’s legacy VEAP: “Our Armstrong Family,” pp. 8–9. In his last will and testament, dated March 28, 1834, Van Nuys ordered “the sum of one hundred dollars…payable to my Grandson Stephen Armstrong…be invested in land in the name and for the use of said Stephen Armstrong.” Also in the will Jacobus bequeathed “to my grandson Stephen when he shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years one horse, saddle and bridle and a suit of new clothing of at least the value of one hundred dollars in all, and desire that he may stay in my family during his minority and receive an education sufficient to enable him to transact business with facility.”

  census of 1850 “Schedule I: Free Inhabitants in Noble Township in the County of Auglaize, State of Ohio, Enumerated on the 6th Day of September 1850,” available online at www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/oh/auglaize/census/1850/0278b.gif.