I Had a Crush on Neil Armstrong

by

Lauren Baratz-Logsted

I was exactly seven years and two weeks old when the first man walked on the moon on July 20, 1969. We watched the event and all the days of surrounding coverage on the large console television in the living room. Here’s what I remember: it was hot. This was five years before we’d get central air-conditioning. The only cooling units we had were a window air-conditioner in my parents’ bedroom—on the hottest nights of summer my brother and I would sleep on their floor—and a plug-in fan that would be transported from dining room to living room as needed. It was a lot cooler in the downstairs den, which was mostly underground, but the TV down there was only black and white. This would have been fine if we were just watching any old program, but not for seeing a rocket ship take off or men walk on the moon. For that we needed the big color set.

Here’s the second thing I remember: being equally excited and scared. This was much more exciting than when regularly scheduled programming was interrupted by yet another of President Nixon’s talks (men were going to walk on the moon!) and far scarier as well (those men might die before getting to the moon, they might die on the moon, they might die coming back from the moon; really, death could happen at any time).

Here’s the third and final thing I remember: Neil Armstrong was really cute!

And that’s it.

I wish I could say that when the Eagle landed I had some kind of grand epiphany—“If NASA can do this, I can do anything!”—but such was not the case, or if it was, I have no recollection of it. All I remember now is heat, excitement, fear, and the cuteness that was Neil Armstrong. It may not sound like much, but it did leave a lasting impression.

With the fortieth anniversary of the moonwalk this week, I read Craig Nelson’s nonfiction account Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. I have a curious obsession with emotionally grounded people and what emerged as I read was that of the three men on board Apollo 11—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins—by far the most well adjusted, then and now, is Michael Collins, the one who had to stay with the ship while the other two took their historic walk. I still have high regard for Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, the most vocal of the three in recent years, is fascinating, but I’ve switched my crush to Michael Collins. Is he too old for me? Oh, right. I’m married and he’s still married, the only one of the three astronauts, to his first wife.

Another thing emerged as I was reading Rocket Men, the notion that 400,000—four hundred thousand!—men and women worked with NASA and its subcontractors to put those three men on the moon. When I saw that, I immediately flipped to the index to see if a particular name was there. It was not. Well, I supposed, Mr. Nelson couldn’t cite all 400,000.

Back in the years 1983-1994, I was a bookseller and buyer for Klein’s of Westport. One of my favorite customers was a man I knew as Mr. Hanrahan. He used to come in at the end of the workday, mostly on Fridays. He always had on a perfectly fitted gray suit, crisp shirt, conservative tie. His hair was gray, parted on the side and neatly trimmed, with no bald spots or receding hairline, and his blue eyes sparkled intelligently behind steel-rimmed glasses. He was a favorite because he was unfailingly polite—a tough commodity to come by in a customer—and self-sufficient, meaning he could pick out his own books.

One day he came in and he had on jeans and a white T-shirt. You could have knocked me over, it was such a shocking sight, like seeing Superman take off his cape. Naturally I had to ask him, in my incredibly nosy way while hoping I still sounded polite: “Why the change of wardrobe?”

Mr. Hanrahan told me he’d retired that day. I asked what his job had been but I’m afraid I can’t say what it was since I don’t remember: something involving business no doubt, hence the suit. But we got to talking and it turned out that as one of his previous jobs, about a quarter of a century previously, he’d worked for NASA at the time of the Apollo 11 launch. Now this got me really interested!

And, lucky for me, Mr. Hanrahan was happy to share his recollections. He talked about what an amazing time it was; how they all felt as though they were working on something special and unique; how they felt the world’s excitement, that for once the entire country was united over something positive and how everywhere they went people were excited to see them when they learned where they worked.

I though this all sounded wonderful. But then I got curious. I figured he must have been in his twenties or thirties when he had this amazing peak experience. I began thinking of others who peaked young, in particular athletes, in super-particular the tennis player Bjorn Borg who won a record number of Wimbledon titles and later attempted suicide. That’s another interest of mine: the lives of people after they accomplish some unmatchable-in-their-own-lifetime success.

So I had to ask him: “What was life like afterward? Was it a big letdown, disappointing, knowing there’d never be anything like it again?”

For the first time since I’d known him, this intelligent man looked puzzled. No, he told me. He knew that there would never be anything exactly like that, but that there would always be new jobs, new challenges, new excitements. Always. Those new challenges would be different, but they would all somehow be special.

We talked some more and then he went off to look at gardening books, having decided to take up gardening in his retirement, and I knew he’d be that rare man: one who had been happy in work and would now be equally happy, if differently so, in retirement.

Honestly, I think Mr. Hanrahan was one of the truly happiest people I ever knew.

At the end of Rocket Men on a page by itself right before the Acknowledgments, Mr. Nelson quotes Robert Goddard:

When old dreams die, new ones come to take their place. God pity a one-dream man.

That sounds about right. Surely Mr. Hanrahan knew this, better than anyone I ever met. I hope wherever he is, he’s doing well.

Attendant to all the fortieth anniversary hoopla have been articles on the space program after Apollo 11 and what a disappointment it’s all been; how by just a few years afterward the program was pretty much dead, certainly in terms of manned flights to the moon and beyond; how we should have been on Mars by now. If we want the program to get revved up again, I suppose such articles are necessary, and yet, and yet . . . It just seems to me, at least for this July of 2009, to be a glass-half-empty approach to take, you know? Forty years ago this month, men walked on the moon. Enjoy that half-full—never mind half-full; completely full—glass.

And then do yourself a favor. Go off and live like Mr. Hanrahan.

            
Lauren Baratz-Logsted has sold twenty books to six publishers since 2003. Her published novels include The Thin Pink Line and Vertigo for adults; Angel’s Choice for teens, Me, In Between for tweens; and the first four of The Sisters 8, a nine-book series for young readers, co-written with her novelist husband Greg Logsted and their nine-year-old daughter Jackie. Her next published book will be the YA novel Crazy Beautiful, due out in September. Lauren still lives in Danbury, CT, where she writes and reads pretty much all the time. You can read more about Lauren's life and work at her personal website and the Sisters 8 site. Contact Lauren.