After the Eagle Landed

PHOTO: Neil Armstrong: Eagle Scout, Astronaut, Famous Guy. I met him. Twice.

Fifty years ago today, a man set foot on a celestial body other than this one for the first time, ever. The choice for this honor was made for a reason, and this writer gained some insight into the man on two occasions.

That's right, I met Neil Armstrong, twice.

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It was a Saturday afternoon in January of 1972, at the Emery Theater in downtown Cincinnati, when the Dan Beard Council Eagle Scout Class of 1971 gathered to be recognized en masse. Mom and I were sitting right behind a brother Eagle, the boy who grew up to be local TV news broadcaster Rob Braun. No, he wasn't famous back then, but his dad, Bob Braun, had already cleared a path in the local entertainment industry, as a show host and pop recording artist.

But, I digress.

VIDEO: Rob Braun: Eagle Scout, Local Newscaster, Semi-Famous Guy. I sat behind him. Once.

The keynote speaker was another brother Eagle, in the person of Neil Armstrong, of Troop 14, Wapakoneta, Ohio (one of the last towns in the Midwest where you could make a phone call for a nickel and not yet a dime. But again, I digress). Before it was over, we all got to go up there, get a certificate, and shake his hand, when I said something stupid like "Gee, I'm all shook up." He appeared to be amused.

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We would meet again.

By that time, Armstrong had recently accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He accepted this offer over that of his own alma mater, Purdue, because UC had a small aerospace department. He was immediately given full professorship, in spite of having only a masters degree from the University of Southern California. The College of Engineering was next door to the very different College of Design, Architecture, and Art, where in 1973, I had begun my first year as a graphic design major. In the spring quarter of 1974, the Design Fundamentals class broke up into small groups for a kite design project, but not before our instructor, Ms Gwen Wagner, invited Professor Armstrong to traverse into yet another world, to give us a crash course in aerodynamics as related to kite flying.

PHOTO: The UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. It didn't look this weird back then.

If that sounds hard to believe, Armstrong would have been the first to agree with you. He was undoubtedly chosen as the first to set foot on the moon because, among other reasons, he was as understated a man as you could ever meet. Being world-famous had little effect on his demeanor, but explaining the principles of flight to a group of hippie artist types did manage to overwhelm him a bit. But he kept his head, and took it seriously, as seriously as such an unrealistic scenario could allow while drawing diagrams on a chalkboard.

That was the spring of the big tornado preceded by hailstones as big as baseballs. That was the kite design group where everybody in the group said later that I was completely useless, and in the years that followed, all but the most vehemently dismissive among them had dropped out of the program.

In the years that followed, and much closer to the present, I met two other famous Eagle Scouts, both of whom were nominated for cabinet positions in Washington at the start of 2017, and I was detailed to the Presidential Transition as a photographer. (That's another story for another day.) But the first of them was a man who preferred obscurity, and was chosen for greatness, in spite of it, perhaps because of it.

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VIDEO: Jonathan King appears on the UK's "Top Of The Pops" show in 1965 to sing "Everyone's Gone To The Moon." The show's host needed a haircut more than this guy.

Admit it, you thought I was going to talk about watching the moon walk on television, right? Well, of course I did, like everybody else. A local radio station, WSAI-AM, then at 1360kHz, spent the evening of the landing playing pop songs that mentioned the moon. It felt as if the whole world would never be the same again after one of us stepped beyond it.

And so it goes.