Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (13 page)

Henri had prepared a sumptuous feast of breaded fried cardboard, uncooked potatoes, and a salad rotting from hours in the humid and hot Florida sun.

Suddenly, sobering silence gave way to hearty laughter that shook the motel’s walls all the way to the swimming pool.

The Mercury Seven had been had—in the tradition of those who drive airplanes—with a classic “gotcha.” It was just the ticket needed for the Gemini Nine to be warmly welcomed into the very exclusive astronaut club.

Gemini
5
’s prime and backup crews: Left to right, backup pilot Elliot See, backup commander Neil Armstrong, prime pilot Pete Conrad, and prime commander Gordon Cooper. (NASA)

SEVEN

HOME FIRE

Smoke!

Why am I dreaming about smoke?

“Neil, wake up, Neil!”

Janet!

In that pleasurable place between sleep and wakefulness he could hear her. She was calling him and he could feel her hand on his shoulder. She was shaking him.

“Wake up, Neil, wake up!”

He rolled from his bed and set his feet on the floor. The smell was suddenly undeniable.

“Smoke, Neil, it’s smoke!”

He leapt to his feet, bolted from the bedroom, but instantly recognized he couldn’t see. His eyes were burning and there was heat and thick smoke and he wiped his eyes and swiped at the swirling burning fog. He managed to see a glow from the living room and with eyes throbbing and throat burning he yelled, “Janet, call the fire department. Call…” A spasm jerked his throat and he had to cough, and cough again, and finally he yelled a second time, “Call the fire department, the house is on fire.”

Neil fought back the choking, the coughing, and quickly swirled about. First! What’s first? Mark! Get the baby! He started to move but he couldn’t breathe, he could only hold his breath—
hold it
he ordered himself.
Hold your damn breath
, and he began scrambling through the smoke and heat and the 3:45
A.M.
darkness and then he was in Mark’s room. He rolled the baby in his blanket and secured him in his arms. Fighting the smoke’s burning acidity, he managed to bring Mark back to their bedroom but Janet was gone. He could hear her outside, calling their next-door neighbors Pat and Ed White.

Ed White, the West Point athlete and astronaut who in little more than a year would become the first American to walk in space, was quickly over the five-foot fence between their yards ready to help.

Neil was standing there, out of the house with his arms outreached, handing Mark to Ed. “Take the baby,” Neil told him, spinning around and quickly grabbing a towel. He wet it and disappeared into their burning home again.

“Ricky,” he yelled as he wrapped the towel around his face and dropped to all fours. The inferno was growing and he began scrambling forward through the roiling smoke and under the flames that were curling down from the ceiling.

“Ricky, where are you, son?” he called, feeling his way move by move to his eldest son’s room. If only Ricky would scream or make some noise it would be easier, he thought. Then, suddenly he feared the worse. What if Ricky couldn’t scream? What if he can’t yell? Suddenly Neil was like a terrified spider moving beneath the smoke, scrambling past the flames until he was finally by Ricky’s bed.

He was okay. Ricky was okay.

He grabbed his terrified six-year-old and wrapped the towel around his face, and beat a record-setting retreat below the flames and through the heat and smoke until they were safely outside.

Janet grabbed Ricky. Ed White was busy fighting the fire with a garden hose. He had passed Mark over the fence to his wife Pat who had gotten through to the fire department, and now the living room wall was glowing red. He could hear the cracking of window glass mixed with the sound of the roaring flames, flames that were causing wood to explode with pistol-like shots telling Neil the fire was devouring their home.

The driveway was growing hot beneath his feet and he heard sirens coming, saw the fire trucks flashing lights. Hooded men with masks ran straight for the burning house, and Neil yelled, “I got them. I got them all. There’s no one inside.”

The fire department took over with Neil and Janet and Ed and Pat following the firefighters every move as the professionals fought the flames for more than two hours. That’s when night left and it appeared the last ember had been drowned. The sun came up and everyone could see the mess.

*   *   *

The Armstrongs, the Whites, and the other neighbors got busy. Even some firefighters stayed to help rescue what could be salvaged, and together they moved everything into the Whites’ yard and under their carport.

*   *   *

Ed and Pat White took the Armstrongs in for a few days and neighbors and people Neil didn’t even know brought over toys for the boys. One had a playpen for Mark and another a crib for him to sleep in, while others stacked up diapers and things they said they didn’t need and Neil thought it was a tear he had just wiped from his cheek. The neighbors and other concerned people had brought all kinds of things the Armstrongs might need until they could move what had been worth saving into a nearby rental house.

It wasn’t lost on Neil that the fire could have been a catastrophe for his family if they had become asphyxiated before Janet woke up.

The scientist in him wouldn’t let him forget. Neil had to know what caused the fire. He had to know how to keep it from happening again.

During his urgent trips into the burning house to get Mark and Ricky, Neil had a sense the fire had started in their large living room with its high cathedral ceilings and beams.

The builder had used standard drywall-frame construction and the Armstrongs had the builder put paneling over the drywall.

Within weeks the panel began warping, curling up because of moisture, and the paneling no longer fit. Neil had the builder back, who admitted to his mistake, and his carpenters used a nail set to pound the finishing nails farther into the drywall and studs. The warped paneling simply fell off so the builder then put up sealed paneling and the Armstrongs thought their problem had been solved.

After the fire, inspectors found the cause instantly; one of the nails holding the warped paneling had been driven so deep into the wall it cut through the insulation of an electrical wire creating a trickle short. The small flow of electrical current built up the temperature in that location and when there was flammable heat, materials within the wall ignited. Unfortunately, at 3:45 in the morning.

The Armstrongs selected a different builder, a fire specialist, who built from the roof down instead of from the ground up. In the neighborhood, fire detectors were installed beginning with the Armstrongs and then neighbors Pat and Ed White, Faith and Ted Freeman, and Marilyn and Elliot See.

Within three years of the Armstrongs’ close call with their home, four astronauts from the neighborhood would be killed. Ted Freeman’s T-38 would fail him when it crashed at nearby Ellington Air Force Base October 31, 1964, and the prime crew for
Gemini 9,
Elliot See and Charles Bassett, were killed when their T-38 struck the roof of the building housing their spacecraft at the McDonnell plant in Saint Louis. Astronaut See was also the pilot for Neil Armstrong’s backup
Gemini 5
crew, and the Armstrongs’ good friend and next-door neighbor astronaut Ed White would give his life in the
Apollo 1
launchpad fire January 27, 1967.

It took the builders most of 1964 to rebuild the Armstrongs’ house. They moved in a couple of days before Christmas, but Santa didn’t bring anything resembling normalcy. Only time could bring them that.

The El Lago astronaut neighborhood began when the Whites and the Armstrongs arrived in the Houston area as members of the second group of astronauts. Ed and Neil bought three lots together in the development—one of several planned communities to house those working at the new and thriving space center.

El Lago was principally a neat, ranch house community. It had crisscrossing streets, and the Whites and Armstrongs split their three contiguous lots so each would have a lot and a half.

Other members of the Gemini Nine, the Staffords, Bormans, and Youngs built homes in the El Lago subdivision, too, while the Mercury Seven’s Glenns, Carpenters, Grissoms, and Schirras lived at nearby Timber Cove.

The two neighborhoods were virtually an astronaut colony that would be strengthened by new members from the third group of astronauts selected in October 1963.

Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton now had thirty astronauts under his wing.

Eight of the fourteen new space travelers were test pilots. Five of those test pilots were from the Air Force. They were Donn F. Eisele, Charles A. Bassett, Michael Collins, Theodore C. Freeman, and David R. Scott. There were two test pilots from the Navy. They were Alan L. Bean and Richard F. Gordon, and one remaining test pilot was from the Marine Corps. He was Clifton C. Williams.

The remaining six were all pilots, but more important they came with wide-ranging backgrounds from academia. Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. had a doctorate in astronautics from MIT. His dissertation on orbital rendezvous would be essential in the flight sequences needed to reach the moon, and his dissertation would surely come in handy when he and Neil Armstrong walked on the lunar surface July 20, 1969.

Joining Buzz from the halls of learning was Air Force fighter pilot William A. Anders who held a master’s in nuclear engineering. Another newcomer, Navy aviator Eugene A. Cernan, had an engineering degree from Purdue and a master’s in electrical engineering from the U.S. Navy Postgraduate School. In fact, Cernan would be the last astronaut to walk on the moon. Former naval aviator Roger B. Chaffee also had an engineering degree from Purdue. Then there was Walter Cunningham, a former marine fighter pilot with a master’s degree in physics from UCLA, and former Air Force pilot, Russell L. Schweickart, with a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT.

Neil didn’t know it at the time, but this third group of fourteen astronauts had just brought him Dave Scott, who would be his crewmate for
Gemini 8
, and Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, who would fly with him on
Apollo 11
.

Late 1964 was also the time this writer really got to know Neil.

As a member of the Cape Canaveral press corps I had been covering him and the other Gemini astronauts for two years. But beyond a brief hello and a question or two, our association was scant at best until mutual tragedy was the catalyst for a friendship that would last 50 years.

My wife, Jo, and I had a son born five weeks premature on November 22, 1964. The local hospital failed to take proper precautions. Our baby developed Hyaline Membrane Disease and we did everything we could to help the little fellow develop his underdeveloped lungs.

I had to keep an appointment with longtime friend John Rivard, and during our conversation I had a mental image of Jo sitting up in her hospital bed, crying. She needed me. “I have to go,” I said, interrupting John. “The boy just died.”

“I be danged,” John said, adding as I walked away to my car, “If I can help, let me know.”

There were no cell phones in those days—only landlines and long waits on switchboards and such. I drove as quickly as I could to the hospital, and then ran down the hall into Jo’s room.

She was just as I had seen her in my mind, sitting up in her bed, her face awash with tears.

“Scott’s dead, Jay,” she cried.

“I know,” I said, “I got your message about ten minutes ago.”

We comforted each other, and Jo remained in the hospital a couple of more days. Our three-year-old daughter Alicia was with Jo’s parents in Orlando.

The next morning I was having breakfast at a local restaurant when Neil Armstrong walked in. I mumbled a hello and motioned him to sit down.

He noticed right away that I was down. “Did someone shoot your dog?” he asked.

“It’s a bad time for me,” I explained, telling him about the death of our son.

Neil was from a small town of 6,000. I was from one even smaller, 5,000. A child’s death was a tragedy generally shared throughout those small communities.

Neil told me about losing his daughter Karen Anne, and despite my tragedy I immediately realized that having a child for more than two years, and then losing her, had to be even a heavier burden.

We both considered ourselves lay members of science, and after a while we were trying to analyze the message I had received that my son was dead. Was it mental telepathy from Jo? Was it imagination? Was it only a coincidence? Was it heaven-sent? Whatever it was, Neil argued, “There is much that cannot be explained today. Not by science. Not by any sound reasoning,” he said as a matter of fact. “Be thankful you had such an experience.”

*   *   *

From that day forward Neil trusted me with information I believe he would not trust with others. It was understood I would not report anything without his permission. I have never knowingly broken that confidence.