06/02/2024
Another moment with Neil Armstrong, the "First Man."
I don’t remember the year, but I think it was before Armstrong Hall on the Purdue University Campus was built and dedicated. As usual I was in my Saturday home away from home; the north ballroom of the Purdue Memorial Union. I was there early for a walkthrough of the morning’s stage program, a much bigger deal than usual as Neil Armstrong was on the platform for remarks and or an award for the current President of Purdue, I think it was Martin Jischke at this time.
I was there early to add input if needed to be sure I got good photographs when the actual presentation happened. Blocking and explanations were provided, I had nothing to add, I now had about twenty minutes of downtime before the alumni streamed in for the breakfast event.
As usual and before cell-phones, I went to organize my perpetually chaotic bag of gear and likely started dusting off the front elements of my assortment of lenses. People cleared away from the stage and I became aware it was just me, Neil Armstrong and a busy assortment of students adjusting place-settings and centerpieces on the banquet tables.
Now that the unexposed assortment of 35mm color film stocks, batteries and lenses and lens caps are all in their place in my bag, I become very aware that Neil Armstrong is just 15 feet away from me. He’s glancing at his watch, kind of slumped into a relaxed pose half standing against the stage. Autumn light is streaming into the room. Should I ask him to pose for a photo? No, staff of my rank were told not to interact with him; asking for an autograph was forbidden, and I've written before I understood he desired the anonymity of the life he knew before the big event of July 1969.
Minutes pass and he is still there and we are almost the only people in the ballroom. My mind races, I shouldn’t be silent, we are both part of the human and Boilermaker families. I knew he was an introvert. I arrived at something to say to him that would show my deep appreciation of his talent and dedication, that isn’t something he’s heard too many times from so many admirers. I wasn’t going to ask him about the moon or anything related to the moon, I decided to talk to him about his post Korean War combat service, to a much more dangerous time; a time when he climbed into a claustrophobic bullet strapped to the side of a B-52 bomber nicknamed “Balls-8.”, and he did it more than once!
I break the silence; “Mr Armstong.” He glances over to me. “... you know that moon landing was pretty neat, (he starts to give me a suspicious side-eye almost like; Oh no! Is this guy a moon landing denier?)...but what really impresses me is you got into the X-15 more than once!” (his face lights up, he fully stands and turns toward me)....”that thing was just a bullet with little wings.” Mr. Armstong was fully awake and beaming, he gave his thigh a slap and said with enthusiasm;; “Thank You! Yes it was a bullet with little wings.” He approached me and I talked to him about the photographs I had in the little archive I was steward of, including some old NASA photographs of him with that X-15, and others of him with balsa model aircraft from when he was one of many nascent engineers in the aero-model club at Purdue. I told him I still built-up balsa airframes, he said; “really, good for you that’s great,” he hadn’t done that in a very long time.
We parted, I think I got a side-eye for speaking with him from one of his handlers that returned to the ballroom. For a moment I felt his mind was back to the time of public anonymity, but not so much for those who knew long before the moon landing that Neil Armstrong was a pilots-pilot, a test pilot facing possible death if the math didn’t add up on the airframe or the mission. He had trust in the numbers working, so he flew his missions not form the seat of his pants, but because of his trust in the engineering slide-rule and those woman and men that forged new paths in engineering, laminar flow physics, and heat-transfer equations taught at Purdue University and other institutions around the world.
