On the Passing fo Neil Armstrong

In 1969, my family went over to Mrs. Olfson’s house to watch Apollo 11 lift off. I am not sure why we went next door to her house. I was 14, but I remember watching the launch with her on her TV. Not sure why we went next door, but often people l did that in those days, she used to make a coffee cake for our family on Saturdays, she was sweet, and her son was our dentist. That is how things are in small towns. Watching all the various liftoffs and landings in those days was a community affair, everyone watched; everyone cheered the news of Walter Cronkite. We were more of a community then. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, waiting as each one went up, and news came back of each progressively more complicated feat.

A few days later, I went to church camp, and I remember trying to watch the landing thru the windows of the camp owner’s house and being asked to go away, so we missed it. It was probably THE moment that caused me to question Christianity; I remember thinking, “Why wouldn’t these people want us to see this moment?” It was my first encounter with people who held science in low esteem. As far as my relationship to religion, it was all downhill from then on… all the questions began at that moment that led me to become a Buddhist – all the “why can’ts? why don’ts? And how comes?” I fumed at the counselors and couldn’t take any of it seriously. 

My life has been intimately linked to things related to space, I played spaceman, read books, watched TV shows such as “Lost in Space” and “Star Trek” built models of rocket ships and dreamed of living on Mars when I was older. The world of Bradberry and others became part of my dreams… a world where people could and did anything. So it was that Neil Armstrong, and his mysterious, humble manner and his achievement meant so much to me. 

The day before my son was born, I was sitting in a barber’s chair in Albuquerque New Mexico, and as was common then, the TV stopped and they showed the lift off of the space shuttle… we were stunned, and we all began to cry as we came to realize that something terrible had happened. That night, as I was glued to the TV watching Nightline, my son’s mother went into labor… and my son was born the next afternoon.

So it is that Neil Armstrong has gone to be with the stars and we have a robot wandering about Mars… the future promised me in the late 60’s hasn’t come to be exactly like I had thought.. .but I can say I live on another planet, than that that I was born on as well. Nothing is the same, and never will be.

Hearing the “Tranquility base here…” gives me chills still.

Godspeed Neil Armstrong.