This blog is a response to a comment on an old comment of mine. It all started back when Bill did his excellent “Apollo 11 What we saw” series. With minutes left to go in the last video, Bill said Armstrong was a professor at Purdue. I thought “Wait a minute! I met him at the University of Cincinnati.” I checked the video again, and Bill said Purdue. I checked the internet, and Armstrong was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979. I am pretty sure I “met” Armstrong in 1978 the last year I went there. (Chemical Engineering, MBA in management. I “met” him because the whole thing took maybe 5 minutes. And now for the story.
It was a nice warm spring day in 1978 when I was on the University of Cincinnati (UC) campus walking toward the on site bookstore. In there a bit before it opened, but there was a bench nearby. I saw what I thought was Neil Armstrong (NA) walking in my general direction. He probably came out of the Engineering building’s back door. When I saw him I was a bit surprised and it seems he noticed my look as he had a look on his face I would call resigned. He was walking with purpose, not rushed, but not just strolling either. He was probably thinking he could not be rude and tell me to get lost, but also was headed somewhere in particular. At that point I changed course to intercept. (HAD to use that phrase). I walked up to him as asked “Neil Armstrong?” He said yes. I then shook his hand and said “My name is Harry Ferguson, I am very pleased to meet you and I am most impressed by your skill and courage.” ( I may have said courage and skill, but you get the drift.) I then said something like “I see you have somewhere you want to be, so I will let you go, and have a nice day.” Not sure if exact words except for the last two parts. He then said “Thank you” and went on his way. I got the impression he was thanking me more for letting him go more than anything else I said. I just could not hold him any longer without feeling rude. He is a private man who was “Just doing his job” . No real regrets. Just a bit wistful. Wish I could have talked to him about the moon landing AND Gemini 8. And that is the story.
And one final thing. Another familial connection to the space race. My father, who died in 2003, played college football on the same team at the same time as John Glenn.
2 replies on “My encounter with Neil Armstrong”
Thanks for the story!
My father, Ben Connor, was project engineer on the Mariner 2 mission to
Venus, and in one of his writings said” Much was learned on the way to the planet requarding the environment man must face if he ventures to the planet. I had the good fortune to participate in a brief discussion with John Glen about the significance of our data reguarding hazards to space men.” As a fighter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot preceeding his engineeing career at NASA, he could certainly relate to John Glens questions. My father had a brilliant mind for solving “puzzles” and very complex ones at that. Even more amazing is that for much of his career, it was without the aid of computer programs doing the complex math required for him, instead he did it longhand on page after page of graph paper with only a calculator to help. He has passed on now, and I miss him attempting to explain to me what he was doing, but it was to me simply a foreign lanquage.
Love You Dad.