Neil Armstrong remembered as a 'reluctant American hero'

Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, never embraced his celebrity status, say colleagues and family members of the astronaut who died Saturday.

By Mike Wall,?SPACE.com / August 27, 2012

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong is pictured here, shortly after collecting a sample of lunar dust and rocks. At his feet is the handle for the sample collection tool.

NASA/Andy Chaikin/collectSPACE.com

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Neil Armstrong may be one of the most famous people who ever lived, but he was a modest man who didn't seek out the spotlight, say those who knew the late astronaut.

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Armstrong died Saturday?(Aug. 25) at the age of 82 of complications from a recent cardiac bypass operation. He shot to international fame on July 20, 1969, when he became the first person to set foot on the moon.

But the commander of NASA's?Apollo 11 mission, and the first person ever to walk on the surface of another world,?didn't glory in his iconic moment, viewing it instead as all in a day's work, family members said.

"Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend," the Armstrong family said in a statement Saturday. "Neil Armstrong?was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job."

Keeping a low profile

As his boot pressed into the gray lunar dirt 43 years ago, Armstrong uttered perhaps the 20th century's most famous line: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." And by all accounts he really meant it, experts say. [Photos: Neil Armstrong Remembered]

"What he was partaking in was only about furthering the human adventure, furthering what it meant to be human," said space history expert Robert Pearlman, editor of?collectSPACE.com?and a frequent SPACE.com contributor. "When he said that he went to?the moon?for all mankind, and that it was a giant leap for all mankind, it really was."

Apollo 11 was Armstrong's last trip to space, and he left NASA in 1971 to become a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He kept a low enough profile after his astronaut days that some observers branded him a recluse ? an unfair characterization, Pearlman said.

"That wasn't true," Pearlman told SPACE.com, citing Armstrong's teaching stint at Cincinnati and numerous public appearances over the years. "What he didn't do was go Hollywood. He didn't seek the spotlight; he didn't walk down the red carpet."

Armstrong's approach contrasted greatly with that taken by his fellow Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin.

"We were fortunate to have both represented on the same mission," Pearlman said. "We've got the one who was OK with having Buzz Lightyear named after him, and action figures made, and a television movie of his life and all the rest. And with Neil, we have someone who even objected to Hallmark putting his name on an ornament, who didn't want anything to do with the pop culture world."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/o8A8HE2cwSY/Neil-Armstrong-remembered-as-a-reluctant-American-hero

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