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After moon, a step back

Armstrong keeps public appearances to a minimum.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar module as the first man to walk on the moon.
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar module as the first man to walk on the moon.Read moreNASA

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong became the most famous man on the planet by taking a short walk off it. Since then, hehas tried to live with that fact, and also to live it down.

Only rarely - on major anniversary dates, like today's - does he show up on TV, and then only fleetingly. He hasn't leveraged his fame for higher office or some grand cause, nor has he sold it willy-nilly.

If the subject is Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon tends to turn churlish. He will defer, deflect, or refuse to answer. When his little hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, sought to honor him with a parade on the 25th anniversary of his moonwalk, Armstrong sent his regrets. He once pleaded to a reporter, 10 years after his feat: "How long must it take before I can cease to be known as a spaceman?"

As if such a thing were possible. Or even desirable.

It's not fair to call Armstrong, 78, a "recluse," as many accounts of his life after Apollo 11 invariably have. He's no cosmic J.D. Salinger or Howard Hughes, shunning the world out of spite or madness. Armstrong makes the occasional public appearance and speech, as he did last night at an event at the Smithsonian Institution, and will do again today at NASA's official commemoration of the moon landing. He has also appeared in two NASA video productions in recent years.

What's more, after resisting would-be biographers for years, he finally caved to his family's prodding and sat for more than 50 hours of interviews with Auburn University historian James Hansen for a 2005 biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.

Yet for the 40th anniversary, Armstrong again rationed himself. He told planners at the Smithsonian and NASA that he would speak at their events, but not as the keynoter, not at length, and only in conjunction with other Apollo alumni.

So yesterday, in one of their few joint public appearances, the crew of Apollo 11 spoke, but didn't get soggy with nostalgia. They instead discussed the future and the more distant past.

Armstrong spoke about Apollo 11 for about 11 seconds. Second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin said the best way to honor the crew would be to follow in their footsteps and aim for Mars. Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins said the moon was not interesting, but Mars was.

Armstrong had said a book-signing at the museum was out of the question (He stopped signing anything some years ago when brokers began peddling bogus signatures on the Internet). Media interviews? Not a chance.

"He's always been this way," said one person involved in planning the events.

Carol Armstrong says her husband averages 10 interview requests per month. He turns them all down, usually without reply (he did not respond to a request for this article).

"I think he thinks it's all been said before," she said from their home near Cincinnati.

Those who know Armstrong say his behavior has been consistent over his lifetime. Even before the world insisted on lionizing him, he was his own man, faithful to his standards: Reject personal glory. Avoid focusing on the self. Keep what's private private.

Until Hansen revealed it, some of Armstrong's closest work associates never knew that Armstrong and his first wife, Janet, had a 2-year-old daughter who died of a brain tumor a few years before Armstrong went into space.

"Neil has a very strict sense of what's appropriate to be involved in, and has since he was a boy," said Hansen, a former NASA historian who spent nearly three years corresponding with Armstrong before winning his cooperation on the book.

Armstrong has such a hard time speaking about himself in the first person, Hansen said, that "he felt he couldn't write an autobiography or a memoir."

In his limited public utterances, Armstrong has always turned the subject away from himself. He usually deflects credit to the 400,000 people who built and maintained the vehicles and managed the bureaucracy that enabled him and Aldrin to reach the moon.

Armstrong has confided in colleagues that he never wanted to be defined by Apollo 11. Though he is wary of offending NASA, he said as much publicly, in a rare TV appearance in 2005, to promote Hansen's book on 60 Minutes: "We'd all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work."