HOW NEIL ARMSTRONG SHUNNED The dark side
IT was one small step for man – but the astronaut who made it was determined the first moon landing wouldn’t be a “giant leap” into worldwide fame for him.
Even as Neil Armstrong uttered his immortal words when he set foot on 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.
It led to an almost reclusive life for the world’s most celebrated man who shunned the spotlight, plagued by fears for his family, marital heartache and constant suspicion of other people’s motives.
As the moon landing anniversary approaches, son Mark, 56, admits:
“Dad got 10,000 pieces of mail a day. But he didn’t like the fame.” Mark’s brother Eric, 62, says: “Dad didn’t see himself as an American hero.”
And his official biographer James Hansen – whose book First Man became a 2018 movie starring Ryan Gosling – adds: “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.
NERDY
“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, weeks after the 1969 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 – named after Armstrong’s famous words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.
Their journey took them everywhere from Mexico to Yugoslavia and Britain. They were seen by around 100 million people. Armstrong, then 38, had the world at his feet – but unlike Aldrin, who lapped up fame, he refused to change.
“I am, and ever will be, a white- socks, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics,” he declared.
But the one thing that did change was his family life. He began to fear for the safety of sons Mark and Eric – haunted by the 1932 kidnap hell of fellow American aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Linbergh paid the $50,000 ransom, only for his snatched 20-month-old son to be found dead. “I know there were threats made against us,” says Mark. “Dad moved away from fame because 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
I know there were threats made against us. Dad moved away from fame
SON MARK ON HIS FAMOUS FATHER’S FEARS FOR FAMILY
died of a brain tumour seven years before the Apo llo mis s i o n , Armstrong, then a test pilot, refused to talk about the loss, leaving grieving Janet adrift. Mark reveals: “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.
“But here 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 his daughter’s death. When he asked the astronaut about it, he responded: “I think it would be unreasonable to assume that it would have no effect.” Hansen says: “It was a very odd expression, a strange way of answering – but this was the type of response not unusual from Neil.”
After 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. “It wasn’t that he was an absent father when they were younger, but there was always a distance there because of his nature,” says Hansen.
SUED
“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