Friend’s new book tells how tragedy pushed Armstrong to head to space
Who was Neil Armstrong, the firstman on the moon?
He had a dry sense of humor, took forever to make a decision, was a stickler for accuracy and considered “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe’s take on the early space program, to be terrible history.
Longtime NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree offers these personal insights and others into his reclusive friend in thenew book “Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight.”
“This is not a biography. I hate
doing a biography,” said Barbree, 80, who lives in South Merritt Island.
Now in his 56th year with NBC, Barbree has covered every mission by U.S. astronauts, from Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 in 1961 to the last shuttle mission in 2011.
The book recounts Armstrong’s life as a pilot and also offers a history of the U.S. space program, highlighting the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, which Armstrong commanded in July1969.
“I was striving for accuracy and trying to get the book that Neil wanted,” Barbree said. “I try to get in his mind. I tried to re-create what I directly observed.”
Barbree points to mutual tragedy as the catalyst for his long friendship with Armstrong. They each lost young children: Armstrong’s 2-year-old daughter, Karen Anne, died in 1962 of complications brought on by an inoperable brain tumor. Barbree’s son developed a respiratory disease and died at 2 days old in 1964. Barbree shared his sad news with Armstrong the next day.
“When I told him, you could see a change in his face. All of a sudden we had something that brought us together,” Barbree said.
Karen Anne’s death “really hurt Neil, tore him up,” Barbree said. “Being a person of science, he couldn’t live with not coming up with a way to save Karen.”
Barbree writes in the book, to be released today, that Karen Anne’s death was the single most important reason that Armstrong submitted his name to become an astronaut.
“After she had passed, he was thinking about her so much,” Barbree said.“He was disappointed that he hadn’t tried for Mercury 7. He tried for the second group and got in there. … He had to move forward, and this is the way for her.”
Armstrong, a small-town man with old-fashioned values, had little use for the mass media and news conferences.
“He hated dealing with the press. He wished they’d go away,” Barbree said. “When he was professor at the University of Cincinnati, he slammed the door in reporters’ faces. I was one of the few reporters he trusted.”
Armstrong also detested working for NASA after the moon landing. “He hated every day of it. He said every person should have to work in Washington who wants to do penance,” Barbree said. “After a couple of years, he went to Cincinnati. He loved small-town life.”
The astronaut’s reaction to celebrity was based in parton researching the life of aviator Charles Lindbergh, who advised him to stay out of the public eye.
“He admired Lindbergh, and they talked about privacy,” Barbree said. “The only argument I had with Neil, I told him, ‘I’m a journalist.’ I told him, ‘Lindbergh did it on his own dime, he can shut his mouth, but you have an obligation because you went to the moon on the taxpayers’ dime. You don’t have that right of privacy as Lindbergh did.’ ”
People generally don’t know of Armstrong’s decision-making style, Barbree said.
“Neil was probably the slowest man on earth when it came to making a decision but the fastest man at the controls of a spacecraft,” he said. “He would take forever tomake a decision. In a sense, I feel very lucky that we talked about writing this book for 20 years.”
Armstrong read the opening chapter but died at age 82 in 2012 after heart surgery.
“What he contributed to history is too important not to be written somewhere,” Barbree said. “As [NBC anchor] Brian Williams said, the average guy who did that [went to themoon] would own a chain of moon-burger joints. That was not Neil’s style. He never believed in ingratiating himself or enriching himself from the experience, from making money off it. He didn’t have that much money.”