Things You Never Knew About the Moonwalk, Neil Armstrong

Commander Neil Armstrong's words defined our history. His historic first step onto the moon in 1969 truly was "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Even his name is larger than life.


"That's one small step for a man...." said Neil Armstrong -- but depending on whom you ask, they may not have been the first words spoken from the moon.
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A Hollywood restoration company makes the first moonwalk footage clearer.

They weren't? Armstrong's crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, sometimes claims that he got in the first line. Six hours earlier, as the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle touched down, it was Aldrin who called out, "Contact light."

If the subject is Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon tends to turn churlish. He will defer, deflect or refuse to answer. When his little home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, sought to honor him with a parade on the 25th anniversary of his moonwalk, Armstrong sent his regrets. He once pleaded to a newspaper reporter, 10 years after his feat: "How long must it take before I can cease to be known as a spaceman?"

As if such a thing were possible. Or even desirable.

It's not fair to call Armstrong a "recluse," as many accounts of his life after Apollo 11 invariably have. He's no cosmic J.D. Salinger or Howard Hughes, shunning the world out of spite or madness. Armstrong makes the occasional public appearance and speech, as he did Sunday at the Smithsonian and as he will do again Monday at NASA's official commemoration of the moon landing. He's also appeared in two NASA video productions over the past five years.

What's more, after resisting would-be biographers for years, he finally caved to his family's prodding and sat for more than 50 hours of interviews with Auburn University historian James R. Hansen for a 2005 biography, "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong."

Yet for the 40th anniversary, Armstrong has once again carefully rationed himself. He told planners at the Smithsonian and NASA that he would speak at their events, but not as the keynoter, not at length and only in conjunction with other Apollo alumni. A book-signing at the Air and Space Museum featuring his Apollo 11 crew mates, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, was out of the question (Armstrong stopped signing anything some years ago when brokers began peddling bogus signatures on the Internet). Media interviews? Not a chance. "He's always been this way," says one person involved in planning the events.
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Carol Armstrong says her husband averages about 10 interview requests per month. He turns them all down, usually without reply (he did not respond to a request for this article). "I think he thinks it's all been said before," Carol says from their home near Cincinnati. A decade ago, when The Post sought an interview, Armstrong e-mailed his regrets, adding with Garbo-like brevity: "I am comfortable with my level of public discourse."

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