A Small Step and a Giant Man
Remarks Delivered at Convocation
As we gather this morning, I would like to ask each of you to take a moment and look around this chapel at the friends, colleagues, and schoolmates who are gathered here today. We have come together from across the nation and from around the world. There are more than 400 of us here, including students, faculty, emeriti, and staff, and we represent more than thirty American states, and nearly twenty different nations. We come from a wide range of family circumstances, religious faiths, and personal beliefs, but across all of our different qualities, we share the common purpose and experience of choosing to be part of a community dedicated to the most heroic aspects of our human nature. We are a school, and we are dedicated to the ideals of truth and knowledge, kindness and creativity, courage and faith in one another. In a world that seems to grow more complicated and confusing with every passing hour, these qualities can seem dated or antiquated, out of step with the fast paced, cynical, and hard edged aspects of our world, but I want to suggest to you this morning that it is these heroic qualities that matter most, not just in theory, but in practice here at St. George’s.
I admit that the heroic has been on my mind of late for a couple of reasons. The first, and more pedestrian reason is that I love superhero movies, and this summer has had such movies in abundance. I liked the remake of Spiderman quite a lot, enjoyed the wit and visual spectacle of The Avengers, and found the veiled and not so veiled political commentary of The Dark Knight Rises to be brilliant. But of late, the more substantive reason I’ve been thinking about heroes is because Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and one of my childhood idols, died at the end of August. In fairness, I have never even met Neil Armstrong, and all that I know about him comes from learning about his work and his life through books and movies and articles, and a handful of conversations with several astronauts who did know him. Nevertheless, for me, Armstrong and his achievements represent a genuinely heroic record, one that merits both our acknowledgement and emulation.
Since none of you students were alive during the days of the space race, let me assure you that in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there was nothing cooler than the Apollo program. Though the United States already had a space program, in 1961, in a speech to Congress, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon within the decade. It was a bold and visionary statement, especially since the equipment, technology and expertise to achieve the goal simply did not exist at the time. In response to Kennedy’s challenge, the Apollo program developed the rockets, lunar landers, computers, and astronauts they needed, and barely eight years later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, becoming the first human being to set foot on a celestial body other than Earth. It was a landmark achievement in the history of mankind, one that represented another dramatic step forward in human beings’ innate desire to explore and understand the universe and our place in it.
As a kid, I thought everything about the space program was cool. There was danger, adventure, mystery, and science all rolled into one exciting package. Plus it involved giant, fire spewing rockets, and what could be cooler than that? Though I don’t recall seeing the Apollo 11 moon landing itself, I do recall watching a TV shot of one of the subsequent lunar missions, live from the moon. Even to an eight year old, it was genuinely awe inspiring to think that we had been able to fly men nearly a quarter million miles across space, land on the moon, and then fly them home safely. As an adult, the more I learned, the cooler it got. I once had the chance to talk for a bit with Fred Haise, one of the astronauts on Apollo 13, the mission that survived an explosion in space that nearly destroyed the spacecraft. He pointed out to me that when he flew to the moon, the mainframe computer at Mission Control in Houston was at the time among the most powerful computers on Earth. It was a marvel of technology, and it boasted a total of 6 MB of memory. In other words, the cell phones that most of you are carrying in your pockets are vastly more powerful than the computers that took men to the moon. In short, the Apollo program was totally cool, and its success represented a triumph of imagination, invention, and creativity – all qualities that inform our work in school, albeit at a less risky level.
In this way, all of the astronauts who were flying the missions were fundamentally heroic. Some of this was perhaps the result of modern myth making by a media that was far less cynical and negative than today, but most of it was genuine. After all, the astronauts were willing to risk their lives on a great adventure, one where success was far from guaranteed, and people everywhere admired their daring and their skill. That was what brought me to admiring Armstrong as a kid, but as an adult, I’ve come to see even more clearly how unique a man Neil Armstrong was. The details of his biography are easily found on line and elsewhere, so I won’t review them this morning. Rather, it is certain demonstrated personal qualities that I think most important for us to consider as we look towards our work together in the year ahead.
First and foremost, Armstrong demonstrated an unusual degree of skill and courage. Twice in his career as an astronaut he had to make independent decisions in emergency situations. The first time was during a Gemini flight, when a stuck thruster was causing the spacecraft to spin out of control. Armstrong devised a solution that stopped the spinning, saving the crew from a growing danger, even though it cut the mission short. The second, and now legendary episode was when, during the descent to the lunar surface, he took manual control of the lander, flying it by hand and by sight to a landing site that was safer than the initially planned location. When he touched down, Armstrong had just over 30 seconds of fuel remaining. Demonstrating just how tense the moment was, doctors at Mission Control back on Earth measured Armstrong’s heart rate during the landing at over 150 beats per minute, a rate akin to that of a sprinter running a race. It was a far riskier moment than its ultimate success might have suggested, and Armstrong’s elevated heart rate told the true measure of the danger. Though our work in schools is less obviously dangerous, I submit that in our own way, each of us is called on to demonstrate skill and courage in all sorts of ways, be it in a creative solution to a tricky problem, in taking on a challenging idea. Our principle skills may be ones of inquiry, analysis, and of community building, but they still require careful cultivation and deliberate practice, no different in that way than the hours of practice and repetition that allowed Armstrong to succeed. The specifics may be different, but the general principal is the same.
Beyond his obvious and exceptional skill as a pilot and engineer, Neil Armstrong was also a man of uncommon dignity. Following the moon landing, he was in many ways the most famous man on Earth. He could have earned millions in endorsements, run any business he desired, or been elected to virtually any public office in the land. In fact, both American political parties tried hard to enlist him as a candidate. Instead, in a move that is all but unimaginable today, he declined all opportunities to profit from his celebrity either financially or personally. He rarely made public appearances, preferring instead the private life of a common man. How uncommon and different this is from so many counter examples in our culture today, where reality TV stars are famous for no real reason at all, and the goal for many people is not to do something meaningful, but simply to be famous, to be known, to be talked about. My grandfather used to say, “An empty wagon rattles loudest,” meaning that the boasters of the world are generally empty of real achievement. Armstrong never had to boast, and was even reluctant to talk about what he’d done, in part perhaps because the moment itself was so grand that it spoke for itself. We would each do well to pursue goals and achieve success that speaks for itself. Let others “like” and retweet about things – as a school, we will be busy doing, not rattling on about ourselves. In our work this year, we would each do well to emulate Neil Armstrong’s personal dignity, both in our own actions and towards one another. Let’s keep in mind that being talked about is less important than doing the right thing, and that success and celebrity are two very different things.
Beyond his personal dignity, it is clear that Armstrong also had a sense of the greater human achievement the Apollo landing represented. Given that the landing took place against the backdrop of deep Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, it is especially telling that Armstrong and his crewmate Buzz Aldrin paused on the surface of the moon to place a small memorial packet bearing the names of five astronauts, three American and two Soviet, who had died in their respective nations’ space efforts. This small but humane gesture, along with words on the plaque left behind at the landing site suggests that the crew understood the larger significance of the moment for all humanity, not just for the United States. The plaque at the landing site reads in part “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind.” In our efforts throughout this year, I hope we remember that the ultimate goal of our mission lies beyond the near horizon of the academic year, or even the college experience that lies beyond. The ultimate goal of St. George’s mission hopes that our graduates lead lives of constructive service to the world and to God – the whole world, not just our corner of it. This is why we incorporate service, this is why global engagement matters. I suspect that Armstrong and the Apollo mission he commanded would understand why.
Finally, it’s clear from his life’s work that Neil Armstrong grasped the fundamental importance of learning. As noted above, he could have pursued any professional path he wished when he came home from the moon. What he chose to be was a teacher. For eight years after leaving NASA, Armstrong taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, near his home in Ohio. Beyond his work in academia, Armstrong remained a passionate supporter of manned space exploration, and of the sciences in general. It is clear to me as it must have been clear to Armstrong that science and technology are tools to advance our understanding not just of the universe, but also of ourselves as human beings. As we look ahead to the construction of an expanded science and academic center here at St. George’s, it is vital that we keep in mind the larger impact that science and scientific learning has on all of us. Great teaching creates real learning, and a facility that promotes both will help to ensure a more promising future not just for the school, but for the larger world we hope to serve.
That larger world, the one that surrounds this little Hilltop is not one that treats its heroes well. Too often we learn that our Earthly heroes are as fictional and as flawed as the ones in our comic books and movies. Our heroes turn out to be less than what we’ve imagined, not larger than life. What has always inspired me about Neil Armstrong is that his real life story is in many ways better than fiction. After all, his heroic qualities endured throughout his life, and in so doing inspired greatness in many others. That is a gift of great measure, and as we stand on the doorstep of a new year, let us reflect on one of history’s heroes, and follow where we can the footsteps he left behind on the moon and here on Earth.
Copyright 2012-2022, Eric F. Peterson, All Rights Reserved