Neil Armstrong Took the Hardest Step for All of Us

When Neil Armstrong died today at the age of 82, we lost a beacon, a somewhat distant and fading light that remained present enough to remind us what's possible. Armstrong was the first man — human– to ever set foot on the surface of the moon, and when he did, he spoke words that instantly lifted a generation's eyes to the skies: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

The moment, which I witnessed when I was just five years old, changed me forever.

Now, back then, I didn't even want to see the moment. I was tired and the Apollo 11 astronauts were not even scheduled to step onto the Moon's surface until nearly midnight. My father, though, knew it would be a historic event and made me and my seven-year-old sister do laps around the coffee table until the big moment.

As you can see from the video, it was not an HD moment. The black and white feed was grainy, the audio clipped and our tube television set was 25 inches — postage-stamp-sized by today's standards. Even so, I could see Armstrong walking carefully down the steps and then pausing as his foot touched the surface to say the famous line. Perhaps the line was scripted — it was certainly timed perfectly — but I think Armstrong was also primed to say something momentous because he knew this was his and the world's brightest moment.

Being five, I didn't think much of what he said. Maybe because I couldn't yet think in those poetic terms (I was still reading Fun with Dick and Jane, after all). Still, from that moment on, I was smitten with space. In fact, much of the world was for a while. I recall that the local Mobil station even gave out flat sheets of cardboard that you could build-into 10-inch lunar landers. I spent hours making mine.

The Apollo missions continued, but Armstrong did not fly again. He worked with NASA for a number of years after Apollo 11, but eventually left NASA to work in business and even served as pitchman for companies like Chrysler.

For much of America, though, Armstrong faded into the background as his Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin (who followed him onto the moon's surface that July night in 1969) became more and more present. Just a couple of years ago Aldrin competed in Dancing with the Stars.

Armstrong did not seem like the type to compete on a reality television show. In fact, in recent years he appeared more and more taciturn. It was as if he were angry. Perhaps he was frustrated that the U.S. had, after abandoning manned moon and Mars missions, even walked away from running its own manned spaceflight program.

That's just conjecture on my part, though. The truth is, Armstrong's heroic accomplishment on July 20, 1969 may have been enough for the quiet Ohioan. After conquering the stars and moon, what else is there left to do, really?

Today, we marvel at the mechanical brilliance of the Mars Rover Curiosity as it slowly creeps across the red, dusty surface of Mars, and we'll be sad if it malfunctions. Yet, it's still just a very smart machine and not a flesh-and-blood human who took the ultimate risk: Stepping inside a rocket and blasting off into airless space to step firmly on sphere that, with just 1/6 the earth's gravity, seemed ready to cast him back out into space. Astronauts like Armstrong and Aldrin (and all those who came after them) had no guarantees they'd come home alive, and yet they did it for us, for science, for history and because something inside them said, "this is where we must go."

That impulse made Armstrong and his kind unique among men and women. A quiet man with nerves of steel. A shy smile that hid true grit.

For me, I just want to thank Mr. Armstrong for giving me a memory I can never forget and a lifelong love and fascination for space. I suspect millions around the world feel the same.