Farewell to a Reluctant Hero FAMED ASTRONAUT AND AMERICAN HERO Neil Armstrong was not chosen to be the first man to step on the moon, he liked to point out humbly; it was simply his turn on the flight rotation. It might have been another of the Apollo missions to touch down on the lunar landscape, but ultimately it was Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 who made history. Armstrong, who passed away in August at age 82, was exceedingly modest. He earned his position on that flight roster because he was one of an elite corps of test pilots and aerospace engineers, and according to his Telluride friend Ron Allred, he was distinguished among even his peers. “He was a very humble, very modest person. He always gave everyone else credit. But I talked to a number of astronauts that knew him well—they really admired him and would say that he was the best and the brightest, the one you wanted with you on a dangerous mission.” Allred said Armstrong never talked about his exploits unless he was asked. He knew him for years before he heard the story about Armstrong bailing out of the cockpit during one of the 78 combat missions he flew in North Korea. In fact, it was Armstrong’s Gemini 8 co-pilot David Scott, and not Armstrong, who told the harrowing tale of their early space flight. It was a few years prior to the moon landing, and Gemini 8 was the first spacedocking mission. After they latched onto the space station, something went awry with the thrusters and sent the ship spinning wildly. NASA told them to shut off the engines and head back into orbit; luckily they were still in the gravitational pull of the earth or they might have spun off into space. They lost contact with NASA but somehow managed to land safely—setting a record for missing the landing target by the largest margin—in the Pacific Ocean near New Guinea, far from the planned landing in the Atlantic. “He just sat there quietly as David told the story and nodded,” recalls Allred. “He hadn’t even told his wife. His wife said, ‘I don’t know this story.’ That’s the way he was. A reluctant hero.” And it was only when pressed that Armstrong shared the most terrifying details of the Apollo 11 mission. He confessed that it was frightening to land on a completely unknown type of moon surface and to have just one opportunity to lock the moonlander back onto the mother ship, while traveling 3,000 miles per hour. He said it was a feeling unlike any other to have the moonlander
lock back onto the ship’s hull. “He had just one shot at it. I asked him what would have happened if he hadn’t made it, and he said ‘It would have been a bad day of work.’ He always felt that he was just doing his job.” Because of the moon landing, says Allred, he was invited to meet presidents and kings in places all over the world, and as a professor of aerospace engineering he attended scientific conferences in many different countries. He also had a unique perspective of the entire globe that only a few lucky people are ever able to see, from the window of a ship in outer space. But of all the places he saw, it was Telluride that charmed him so much that he and his wife Carol bought a second home here. He served on Telluride Foundation’s board of directors and loved to ski, and was also an especially competitive and avid golfer, says Allred. It was on the greens where Armstrong would reveal his driven nature and the exacting precision that made him successful in his aeronautic career. “He was an excellent golfer, and we had a lot of fun,” smiles Allred. “We’d always wager a dollar, and he took that seriously. He was after your dollar.” Telluride Foundation has set up a Neil Armstrong Scholarship Fund for people wanting to pay tribute to our national hero and part-time neighbor.
Neil Armstrong
66
www.VisitTelluride.com
800.525.3455