Aroostook Skies:
A tribute to Neil Armstrong
By Larry Berz
“That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”
My heart leapt up Saturday afternoon. My Freestar was accelerating through the golden green hills of planet Presque Isle, Easton bound along the Conant Road. Daydreaming and almost dozing, (not an unusual preoccupation for a near 60-year-old) I clearly and calmly heard the news. The radio voice steadily and almost matter-of-factly intoned and announced the death of Neil Armstrong, age 82, from complications following heart surgery.
For one shining moment, the passing of an American icon super sized the circuitry of my American Experience. A tear welled. What could it possibly mean to be alive and well in America in 2012? What does his death mean to my life?
My brain pumped electricity through a billion neurons reminding me of the moments in July, 1969 when a 13-year-old kid just learning to shave sat spellbound with a hundred young hearts watching the CBS animation; Walter Cronkite droned on preparing us for the impossible: Men on the Moon! Six hours later, alone in a small Wisconsin cabin, I watched the eerie grainy grey astronaut leap into history from the footpads of the Lunar Module.
Neil belonged to all of us because his small steps transported every awakened human alive to the alien landscape some 300,000 kilometers distant. No matter that his family would personally disclose him as a “reluctant” hero. In the final analysis, Armstrong was humanity’s and civilized humanity’s ambassador or agent to the stars. He was an atomic era Adam who served as the living substitution for our scientific aspirations. He symbolized a centuries long capstone for all the progress of modern innovation, technology, and sheer knowledge had catapulted our society towards.
Like a mighty Beethoven symphony, the voyage of Apollo 11 and the first movements upon the lunar badlands proclaimed a new era and a new awareness. And make no mistake – it was a mighty move of the human mind and hand and spirit. But it also came with a price tag. No matter what transpired to diminish or tarnish its glow, the steps of Armstrong will not vanish from sight.
Larry Berz of Caribou is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at Maine School of Science and Math.
