Read Online Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight by Jay Barbree - Free Book Online
Authors: Jay Barbree
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astronauts.
With President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the end of the decade the agency needed pilots to fly the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. The Mercury Seven simply couldn’t do the job alone.
The next group to be selected would be made up of nine astronauts. Like the Mercury Seven named for their spacecraft, the new group would be called the Gemini Nine.
Neil reached for an application, but as fate would have it, his small family was fighting a greater battle.
His infant daughter Karen Anne, who he’d doted over and nicknamed Muffie, was fighting an inoperable brain tumor. Neil and Janet had tried every specialist, had Karen Anne in every available medical facility, sought treatment and hopefully a solution from every corner of the medical world.
Neil’s analytical and scientifically driven core would not permit him to believe there could not be a procedure to surgically remove the tumor. He searched everywhere, but as Christmas 1961 approached Karen Anne was becoming weaker. Neil and Janet got busy making their daughter’s third Christmas special.
They did, and even though Karen Anne could no longer fully stand, she enjoyed her third holiday season.
Neil and Janet refused to abandon their search to make her well. Despite their unrelenting hunt for what would save her, their devoted efforts could not keep tragedy away from their door.
On Sunday morning January 28, 1962, Janet and Neil’s sixth wedding anniversary, Karen Anne died. She succumbed to pneumonia and other complications brought on by the tumor.
The Armstrongs were devastated. Janet’s emotions were uncontrollable. Neil’s grief was a self-imposed quiet. Four-year-old brother Ricky was trying to understand. Friends and family gathered to comfort and help. They buried Karen Anne in the children’s sanctuary at Joshua Memorial Park in Lancaster, California. A poem rested among the flowers: “God’s garden has need of a little flower; it had grown for a time here below. But in tender love He took it above, in more favorable clime to grow.”
The small stone marking her grave read: “Karen Anne Armstrong, 1959–1962.” Between the two lines was carved, “Muffie.”
NASA’s High Speed Flight Research Center grounded all test flights the day Karen Anne was laid to rest.
Very seldom was Neil Armstrong not in control of his emotions. He would long for his daughter for years—no, for the rest of his life. He would never lose those special protective feelings he had for his little girl. Again and again he relived his inability to find the science, to develop it, to learn how he could have helped Karen Anne. In a large sense it came close to wrecking the man—a man who lived within the precise control of his abilities and limitations.
From the day Karen Anne was buried he could never pass Joshua Memorial Park without stopping, without visiting her grave. And yet in time Neil would come to accept the fact that science simply wasn’t there when he needed it. No one on January 28, 1962, knew how to rid a body of an inoperable brain tumor. He didn’t like it, but Neil reached a place where he could live with the fact that there wasn’t anything more he could have done to save his little girl.
Eight years later during Neil and the Apollo 11 crew’s postflight visit to London, a two-year-old girl who came to see the spacemen was nearly crushed against a barrier by the adoring throng. Neil went to her rescue, then gave her a kiss. He clutched her safely until she could be returned to her mother.
The crowd of more than 300 cheered that moving moment. The next morning a London newspaper carried the headline, “2-Year-Old Girl Bussed by Moon Man.”
Neil seldom spoke of this overwhelming heartache in his life. But others close to him were convinced Karen Anne’s death was the single most important reason he would submit his name to become an astronaut. Her death gave him a new purpose. A few months before Neil’s own passing
With President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the end of the decade the agency needed pilots to fly the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. The Mercury Seven simply couldn’t do the job alone.
The next group to be selected would be made up of nine astronauts. Like the Mercury Seven named for their spacecraft, the new group would be called the Gemini Nine.
Neil reached for an application, but as fate would have it, his small family was fighting a greater battle.
His infant daughter Karen Anne, who he’d doted over and nicknamed Muffie, was fighting an inoperable brain tumor. Neil and Janet had tried every specialist, had Karen Anne in every available medical facility, sought treatment and hopefully a solution from every corner of the medical world.
Neil’s analytical and scientifically driven core would not permit him to believe there could not be a procedure to surgically remove the tumor. He searched everywhere, but as Christmas 1961 approached Karen Anne was becoming weaker. Neil and Janet got busy making their daughter’s third Christmas special.
They did, and even though Karen Anne could no longer fully stand, she enjoyed her third holiday season.
Neil and Janet refused to abandon their search to make her well. Despite their unrelenting hunt for what would save her, their devoted efforts could not keep tragedy away from their door.
On Sunday morning January 28, 1962, Janet and Neil’s sixth wedding anniversary, Karen Anne died. She succumbed to pneumonia and other complications brought on by the tumor.
The Armstrongs were devastated. Janet’s emotions were uncontrollable. Neil’s grief was a self-imposed quiet. Four-year-old brother Ricky was trying to understand. Friends and family gathered to comfort and help. They buried Karen Anne in the children’s sanctuary at Joshua Memorial Park in Lancaster, California. A poem rested among the flowers: “God’s garden has need of a little flower; it had grown for a time here below. But in tender love He took it above, in more favorable clime to grow.”
The small stone marking her grave read: “Karen Anne Armstrong, 1959–1962.” Between the two lines was carved, “Muffie.”
NASA’s High Speed Flight Research Center grounded all test flights the day Karen Anne was laid to rest.
Very seldom was Neil Armstrong not in control of his emotions. He would long for his daughter for years—no, for the rest of his life. He would never lose those special protective feelings he had for his little girl. Again and again he relived his inability to find the science, to develop it, to learn how he could have helped Karen Anne. In a large sense it came close to wrecking the man—a man who lived within the precise control of his abilities and limitations.
From the day Karen Anne was buried he could never pass Joshua Memorial Park without stopping, without visiting her grave. And yet in time Neil would come to accept the fact that science simply wasn’t there when he needed it. No one on January 28, 1962, knew how to rid a body of an inoperable brain tumor. He didn’t like it, but Neil reached a place where he could live with the fact that there wasn’t anything more he could have done to save his little girl.
Eight years later during Neil and the Apollo 11 crew’s postflight visit to London, a two-year-old girl who came to see the spacemen was nearly crushed against a barrier by the adoring throng. Neil went to her rescue, then gave her a kiss. He clutched her safely until she could be returned to her mother.
The crowd of more than 300 cheered that moving moment. The next morning a London newspaper carried the headline, “2-Year-Old Girl Bussed by Moon Man.”
Neil seldom spoke of this overwhelming heartache in his life. But others close to him were convinced Karen Anne’s death was the single most important reason he would submit his name to become an astronaut. Her death gave him a new purpose. A few months before Neil’s own passing
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