Remembering Neil Armstrong

The day we set foot on the moon is one of those times when we remember where we were and what we were doing. (I was a camp counsellor at Camp Whitman, Geneva Presbytery, NY). We listened with a sense of awe to Neil Armstrong's famous line as he steeped onto the surface of the Moon, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong died on August 25th, 2012, at the age of 82. The Washington Post has a long news posting remembering him (here), and interested readers can watch a video clip of his famous first step on the moon (here).

The moonwalk that Armstrong shared with fellow astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, brought to a happy close the otherwise conflicted, violent, and divisive decade of the Sixties.  And, perhaps, it marked an important step forward in our race's evolution from a planetary species to an interplanetary one.  That depends, of course, on whether we recapture the dream for the frontiers of space that motivated Armstrong and Aldrin's generation.  Still, we remember the dream, the NASA dream team of thousands that took us to the moon, and the daring accomplishment of the first human beings to walk there.  And we remember the Mission Commander of the Apollo 11 flight that took us to the moon, Neil Armstrong. No matter how far we go in the centuries to come, no one will ever be first again.