The dark side of the moon landings
Secret agony of Apollo hero who hated fame
It was one small step for a man but the astronaut who made it was determined that the first moon landing wouldn’t be a “giant leap” into worldwide fame for him.
Even as Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words as his footprint hit the lunar dust on July 20, 1969, he knew he would come back down to Earth in more ways than one.
And the Apollo 11 splashdown in the Pacific four days later was to prove the beginning of an enigma.
One of the world’s most celebrated men lived an almost reclusive life out of the spotlight – plagued by fears for his family, marital heartache and constant suspicion of other people’s motives.
As the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approaches, his son Mark, 56, said: “Dad got 10,000 pieces of mail a day but he didn’t like the fame.”
And Mark’s brother Eric, 62, added: “Dad didn’t see himself as an American hero.”
Armstrong’s official biographer James Hansen – whose book First Man became a 2018 movie starring Ryan Gosling – added: “I’ve never met anybody quite like Neil. He had no ego and turned down so many opportunities to make money.
“Many of the astronauts who went to the moon also had some religious or spiritual epiphany but nothing changed in his approach to life.
“His then wife Janet certainly didn’t see any change. To her, it was the ‘same old Neil’ who came back from the moon.”
In September 1969, weeks after the mission, Armstrong, fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, who piloted Apollo 11’s command module, were sent on a 38- day world “Giant Leap” goodwill tour.
Armstrong, then 38, had the world at his feet but, unlike Aldrin, who lapped up fame, he refused to change.
He said: “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics.”
He began to fear for the safety of Mark and Eric – and was haunted by the 1932 kidnap hell of fellow American aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Lindbergh paid a $ 50,000 ransom, only for his snatched 20-month- old son Charles Jr to be found dead.
Mark said: “I know there were threats made against us. Dad moved away from fame as he didn’t want what happened to the Lindbergh baby to happen to us.”
Then there was his challenging, 38-year marriage to Janet Shearon, an economics student he met at university.
When their toddler daughter Karen died of a brain tumour seven years before the Apollo mission, Armstrong, then a test pilot, refused to talk about the loss, leaving grieving Janet adrift.
Mark said: “I don’t remember her death ever being discussed at home. My sister died on January 28, my parents’ wedding anniversary. They never celebrated it for that reason. It was a wound that never healed.
“There was a portrait of her – just before she died – that dad treasured more than any other possession.”
Hansen reveals he discovered Armstrong had made errors during test flights in the aftermath of Karen’s death.
When he asked the astronaut about it, he said: “I think it would be unreasonable to assume that it would have no effect.”
Hansen said: “It was a very odd expression, a strange way of answering. But this was the type of response not unusual from Neil.” Af ter talking to Janet – who described a typical argument with Armstrong as “Neil saying no” – Hansen says he was surprised the marriage lasted so long. The couple divorced in 1994, and the ex-naval fighter pilot went on to marry Carol Held Knight, who he met at a golf tournament. He became worried his second marriage would affect his relationship with Eric and Mark so Armstrong tried to open up and get closer to his boys. Hansen said: “It wasn’t that he was an absent f a ther when they were younger but there was always a distance there because of his nature.
“After he married Carol, he became an integral part of her family, to the extent his two sons and their children sometimes felt he was showing her family more attention than he had shown them.
“Neil became aware of this and would take the boys, by now in their 30s, on golfing holidays to Ireland and St Andrew’s in Scotland to get closer to them.”
In 1972, Armstrong was made a freeman of Langholm, the seat of the Scottish clan. He and Janet brought the Dumfriesshire town to a standstill with a historic visit.
To this day, the area boasts monuments and memorials to his achievements and there is a mini Armstrong museum display in nearby Gilnockie Tower.
Until Hansen’s book – for which the author had rare access to the astronaut
– the public had very little insight into Armstrong’s life.
The man who joined Nasa’s Astronaut Corps at 32 and became the first civilian astronaut to fly in space gave very few interviews.
He avoided moon events, even failing to turn up to a parade marking the 25th anniversary in his home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio.
He stopped signing autographs as he didn’t want people to exploit his name and sued Hallmark cards in 1994 for using his “one small step” quote without permission.
Throughout his life, Armstrong – who died in 2012 at 82 – rarely spoke about the mission with friends and family.
Hansen said: “He still did lots of talks and university lectures. All of his talks were scripted. I think he was concerned about being misrepresented. He had been a naval fighter pilot in the Korean War and a test pilot for years but felt the only thing people wanted to talk to him about was the moon landing, which only took a year out of his life.”
Hansen added that Janet told him she felt Armstrong’s refusal to open up only made things worse as it “built up the mystique surrounding the first man on the moon”.
He said: “People expected Neil to be a sort of demi- God or hero but he was different from other astronauts. He wasn’t at all the gung- ho, macho fighter pilot type, those often depicted as the guys with the ‘right stuff’.”
A second book by Hansen, Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind, published by Purdue University Press, will be out in October.
He believes Armstrong’s introverted character is rooted in a childhood of moving from town to town almost yearly in America’s midwest, where his father audited farm properties.
He said: “Friendships didn’t last long, which I think had some effect on him. His father was an emotionally distant man but he had such a deep love for his mother.
“She was an evangelical Christian but Neil never believed in God, although she died thinking he did.
“I don’t think he wanted
I know there were threats made against us. Dad moved away from fame Son Mark on father’s fears for family
to argue with her so he developed ped an avoidance st rateg y in childhood which he seemed to use in adulthood. There wass a cold edge to him if he was as suspicious of your motives.”
Many experts have wondered ed whether he was on the highhperforming end of the autistic c spectrum.
Hansen said: “It is a proposal al talked about by those closest t to him. In many ways, he was s an old-fashioned character.
“When he and Janet split, they shared about £2.4million between them.
“He could have been far richer but you couldn’t buy Neil Armstrong. He wasn’t for sale.”