Neil Armstrong is a boyhood hero of mine. He is one of my heroes not because he was the first man to walk on the moon, although that has something to do with it. He is my hero because he came from my hometown of St. Marys, Ohio.

In 1969, nothing was bigger and more exciting in the world than what NASA was doing. President John F. Kennedy said that we would put a man on the moon, and the man they picked was born in my hometown—to a 14-year-old kid like me, that was about as cool as it got.

I remember an English teacher, Zula McIntosh, talking about having Armstrong as a student at East Elementary before his family moved to nearby Wapakoneta, Ohio, following his fourth grade year. The doctor who delivered him into this world was an old friend to the family. According to local historians, his family was one of the first to settle in St. Marys, so his ties and roots were very strong in our little community of 8,000 residents. And this was the first man on the moon.

In a scene that was played out in nearly every household in the United States, my family was glued to the television when the Lunar Module made its final approach to the moon’s surface. The living room was dark, with just the light from the television illuminating our faces. We cheered when the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) landed safely, and waited what seemed endless hours for the lunar module door to pop open. And then, there it was. The grainy photos that history has welc.