Neil Armstrong – the man behind the legend

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LIBRARY NASA PHOTOGRAPHY / SCIENCE

Neil Armstrong is one of the most famous people in the history of mankind.

Upon his return from the moon, he was celebrated by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers. He was captain of the United States and Kirk, with a touch of President John F. Kennedy, in one.

He had the world at his feet, but instead of embracing his celebrity status, he withdrew from public life.

The public knew little about this enigmatic man. But now, we see the real Neil.

There was a feeling that he was reclusive. Maybe the experience of the lunar mission had left him somewhat traumatized, because life on Earth seemed like an anticlimax after the Moon was hit.

He did not like to give interviews, so his silence left room for such rumors to develop and be recycled every decadal anniversary of the first landing of the moon.

I was one of the few journalists to have had the chance to meet Neil. And he seemed to me to be the healthiest person I've ever met.

I was a young journalist working for BBC Look East. He was receiving an honorary degree from Cranfield University and I was invited to interview him.

I was nervous and struck with stars. He was smiling and friendly. He was the first man to set foot on the moon and yet, he was courteous, put me at ease and answered my questions in a thoughtful and thorough way.

And he felt my pain when I confessed to being disappointed with the cancellation of the Apollo program, thus ruining my boy's dream of one day traveling in space.

I asked him: "What happened to the Armstrong dream?"

"The dream is still there," he replied with a spark in his eyes. "The reality may have disappeared, but it will come back in time," he continued.

His response was an act of kindness intended to awaken the optimistic spirit of the moon landing in a young man, rather than providing a story to a journalist.

I saw him again 16 years later. He was in the UK with his fellow Apollo astronauts, Gene Cernan and Jim Lovell, as part of a world tour to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Moon's landing.

We were invited to interview them in a not so splendid hotel near Heathrow Airport under strict confidentiality conditions.

The astronauts were booked under false names, and when the hotel staff asked what was the interview, I said it had something to do with golf. This seemed plausible given the astronauts' dress code.

I reminded Neil Armstrong that we had met a long time ago. To my surprise, he gave me that same warm and reassuring smile and said that he remembered it and that he had talked affectionately about that day.

We made small discussions around a sandwich and discussed his tour. But he declined the invitation to another interview, saying that he did not want to turn the spotlight on his fellow astronauts.

This vision of him emerges from the documentary film Armstrong, which was released Friday to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the landing of the Moon.

His youngest son, Mark, and his granddaughter Kali, both musicians, came to BBC News Studios to talk to us about it.

We showed them the highlights of the NASA mission images to put them in the mood.

Watching his grandfather move toward the launch pad, Kali was struck by the resemblance between Armstrong, 39, and his 56-year-old father.

And they both smiled, unable to contain their joy of what they felt so obviously as their great luck.

And although it's a story Mark and Kali knew so well, they were seized. "It never gets old," Mark tells him.

Dad and his daughter watched Neil wonderfully descend from the lunar module and utter the words that would resonate forever through the story: "It's a small step for the man, a big step for him." # 39; humanity. "

"Good job, grandpa!" Kali murmured, breathless, her eyes full of emotion as if she were watching him live.

Mark said that the impression of his father alone was false.

"I think the media misinterpreted my father," he told us.

"He was thoughtful, had a great sense of humor and was musical – he sometimes walked down the hall and opened with a song from Oklahoma!

"And he was not the kind of father who would tell you what to do all the time, he was more of a type of teacher who would show you different options and urge you to think seriously about your choices and choose the right one." good, just like he did for example all his life. "

For Kali, Neil was simply a "grandfather" who did not talk much about landing on the moon. But he once told her that the greatest impact of the mission on him was to see the Earth rise from the lunar surface.

"In 1969, he looked at the Earth and saw it from space as a fragile resource and hoped that people would care about it," she said.

I also met Neil's eldest son, Rick, while he was traveling to the UK to take part in the moon landing celebrations. Now a software engineer, he loves to be the son of his father, but he sometimes admitted that his legend was sometimes difficult to live.

"There is an expectation," he said. "Everyone expects to be judged on their own merits and being a son of a famous person can sometimes carry him away.

"I would have liked to be an astronaut in the shuttle program, and maybe not, because I did not want to do the comparison."

When asked what Neil's legacy was, Rick said, "When I think of an inheritance, I do not think about daddy, I'm thinking of the Apollo program where a team of thousands committed to an objective.

"When you work towards this goal, you can achieve incredible things.

"And there was the inspiration that it gave to people, so many people said that they had become scientists, engineers, doctors or something else, because they were inspired by what happened in the 60's. You can not calculate the value that has. "

In a sense, those who were present for the landing of the moon are all Neil's children. It was a moment shared by millions of people around the world, which allowed us to realize that we could all, in our own way, reach the Moon.

For many of us, experience has shown that everything is possible and has motivated us to continue our efforts.

For me, the most heroic part of Neil's story is that, after playing his part in this incredible cultural transformation of humanity, he had the humility of being in the world. to go and be the man that he really was: the teacher, the musician, the father, engineer – the real Neil Armstrong.

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