Neil Armstrong was a calm, level-headed man always destined for great things – and perfect to lead the Apollo 11 mission to the moon
Dudley Schuler is a childhood friend of Neil Armstrong from Ohio, USA.
Neil was one of my very best friends. We first met when I was 12 or 13. I had moved to Wapakoneta, Ohio, a year or two earlier and Neil moved there the following year. We met in the boy scouts, and because we were the new fellas we got to be well-acquainted and became good friends. We were almost identically the same age – his birthday was 5 August and mine was 27 September.
He was a studious boy – they moved him up a grade because he was very eager to learn – but we had a lot of fun and laughs together. Already at that age, he was interested in flying. He'd build model aeroplanes and had all different kinds hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom. They'd have a rubber band attached to the propeller so you could wind them up and they would fly. If one didn't turn out too well, we would light the tail on fire and let it fly out the window and watch it crash and burn.
Neil got himself a job at one of the drugstores downtown, and with the money he made he'd ride his bicycle out to our makeshift local airport and take flying lessons from a local pilot. He got his flying licence before he was 16 and eligible to drive. Most of us really weren't aware that he was doing it. He was a very private person.
In his senior year at high school, we went to the prom. His father allowed him to have the car for the night and after the prom was over we got in the car with our dates and started to drive. Coming home at about four in the morning, Neil dozed off and drifted off the road into a ditch. A farmer with a pick-up truck had to come and pull us out, but the next morning Neil's dad saw the scratches all along the whole side of the automobile. We promised that we would never tell anyone what happened, and none of us ever did until we had the homecoming after the moon flight and Neil's date from the prom finally told the story. As time went on we could tell that he was destined for something important, but we had no idea what. I became a florist and opened my own shop in Wapakoneta, and Neil became an aeronautical engineer. He flew from aircraft carriers in the Korean war, and then later he served as a test pilot. When he came home, he would call ahead and then fly over the house so his folks knew to go and collect him from the airport.
When I found out he was going to the moon, I immediately wrote him a letter congratulating him and wishing him the best. I always felt that Neil was the obvious person to be chosen as the commander because he was such a cool-headed person. In situations of tension, he was always cool and in control.
During those eight days, the whole community was really tense and anxious that everything went well. The church held a continuous prayer vigil and at home we had two televisions, one on top of the other, in case one of them went out and we missed something. Our whole family sat watching. We were all in tears of joy when they touched down on the moon. It was a wonderful moment, but the tension didn't stop until they landed in the ocean and were picked up.
A few weeks after the flight, we had the big homecoming for Neil. Afterwards, he and his wife at that time, Jan, came over to our house accompanied by two nice young fellas from national security. We sat and chatted and then the Miss America pageant came on and we all watched it in the family room with our shoes off. We asked him a few questions about going to the moon and he said a few things, but even with close friends he was reluctant about discussing it. He just thought of it as his job and didn't feel that he was deserving of all the accolades. He did mention that the only thing anybody was concerned about during the flight was the fact that the ship and everything on it had been manufactured by the lowest bidder. That was the kind of dry sense of humour Neil had.
Later, he moved close to Cincinnati, which is about 100 miles south of here, to teach aeronautical engineering at the university. He lived on a farm with his wife and they were very private. He would come here once in a while for a dinner party or a class reunion, but mostly we stayed in touch by email.
We were in Tennessee when we heard on the news that Neil had passed away. Even though we'd just arrived, we turned around and got in the car and came back home. We felt we needed to be there with the people who knew him. A few days later the community had a memorial service in his honour. His family had said, if you want to honour Neil, just wait until there's a full moon in the sky and look up and give him a wink. And that's just what we did. The sun went down and the moon came up and it was one of the most beautiful moons we'd ever seen. At the end of the service everybody looked up at the moon and gave it a wink.
Read the Guardian obituary here