By Marty Frankevicz
For all of my years on earth I really haven’t had many experiences where I’ve been around famous people. When I was a young boy, I went to a promotional event at a local mall in the late 1960s and got autographs from three New York Yankees (Gene Michael, Fritz Peterson, and someone else who I, and most Yankee fans, have long since forgotten, as this was an era when the Yankees were truly abysmal). When I was working for Scott in New York, I rode the elevator with Yoko Ono, though I didn’t even realize it was her at the time, as she wore sunglasses and didn’t say anything. And face it, there really aren’t a whole lot of famous people running around in this part of Ohio.
So I found it rather thrilling to read an invitation from the Miami Valley Boy Scout Council sent to my son, Andrew, earlier this month. The Council asked him to be one of 50 Eagle Scouts in an honor guard at a dinner at the Air Force Museum wherein General Charles Metcalf would be awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, one of the most prestigious Scout awards. While I recognize that it is an extreme privilege for my son to be invited to such shindigs, I’d never heard of the General, so I figured my son didn’t know about him either. Even the invitation didn’t state what the General had done to make him worthy of the award (he ran the Air Force Museum for a number of years in case you too didn’t know). But what made the invitation so compelling was the last line. In newspaper parlance, that’s called “burying the lede.” In an almost off-hand manner the invitation stated the person who was to present the award to General Metcalf was a previous recipient of that award - another guy you probably never heard of - one Neil Armstrong. Indeed, while it is necessary to write the invitation so that it’s all about the General’s accomplishments, that last line couldn’t do anything but overshadow everything before it.
When I read this, I called my son over to ask him if he wanted to be in this honor guard. Being a child of the 2000’s, he pulled away briefly from his video game and, not being a child of the 1960’s, he expressed a fair amount of disinterest in attending yet another Scout function. I told him who would be there, and still got a shrug. It was rather disheartening to realize that my son failed to immediately grasp the significance of being in the same room as Neil Armstrong and have the opportunity to breathe the same air he did.
I grew up on Long Island, and the aerospace industry was quite important in the 1960’s, so much so that we lived and breathed space exploration. My father was an aircraft mechanic for a number of factories there. One of my father’s friends worked at Grumman, building the Lunar Module, the very vehicle that brought Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon, and which was named the Eagle. Many of my classmates had fathers or mothers working at Grumman. So having the opportunity to be in the same room as the great Neil Armstrong, the pride of Wapakoneta, Ohio, and the successor to Greta Garbo in the world of reclusivity, suddenly meant much more to me than I had ever thought. And that’s when I, as the father of a still-wet-behind-the-ears Eagle Scout felt the need to overcome my son’s recalcitrance. I strongly suggested to my 19-year-old boy (sadly, you can’t just demand things of an adult child) that he not make plans to cozy up to the X-Box for yet another night of playing Halo 3 on October 27, so that he could do something worthwhile and memorable with his time - going with his father to see one of the most famous men of the 20th century on a stage. And after what seemed to me to be a great deal of armtwisting, I finally got an agreement from my son.
We arrived at the Air Force museum a bit early. We got our name tags at the table at the entrance. I saw the name tag for Mr. Neil Armstrong. He was, naturally, to be seated at table 1. My son’s name tag said he was to be at table 20. I picked up my tag, and remarked to Andy, “We’re at different tables. I’m at table 24,” to which my son snarkily responded, “Good.” We were waiting in the lobby and through the doors leading from the reserved space parking lot came a neatly dressed gray-haired man wearing glasses, a dark suit and yellow tie. He was greeted at the door by a Museum staffperson who engaged him in a brief conversation ten feet away from me. It looked like Neil Armstrong, but I wasn’t sure. I knew where his nametag was on the table, but they never went near it. But who else would be whisked into the Museum sans sticky label? Obviously someone who had no need for such a label.
My son, as part of the honor guard, got to enter the museum before I did, so that he could find out what his duties would be. I milled about in the lobby rather aimlessly. I knew one of the adult Scout leaders, but he was too busy working at the nametag table. In walked Dr. Charles Goodwin, who was my son’s scoutmaster for his trip to the International Jamboree. He is a delightful gentleman whom I got to know at the shakedown campouts for my son’s Jamboree trip. Aside from being a two-time International Jamboree scoutmaster, Doc, a semi-retired pediatric surgeon at Children’s Medical Center in Dayton, has been the scoutmaster for over 160 Eagles from his own troop over the years, and also a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. In tow were about eight eagle scouts from Doc’s troop. I asked him if he needed to rent a bus to bring all of his crew down to the museum. He gave a hearty laugh and asked if my son was here, because he wanted to apologize to him for not attending his Eagle Scout ceremony last year as he had just had knee surgery days before.
An hour of mingling with other parents of Eagle scouts, scout leaders and other attendees over hors d’oeuvres took place before the dinner. I spoke with one mother of an Eagle who told me that when her husband saw the invitation he wanted to take it down to the Scout offices immediately to make sure that he and his son would not be left out.
When it was time for dinner, we were brought into the modern aircraft hall. My seat at table 24 was as far away from the stage as you could get. There was at least one Eagle Scout from the Honor Guard at every table except for table 1, where the General and his family and Neil Armstrong sat. I got to sit next to a Scoutmaster and another father of an Eagle. After dinner was served, a ten-minute potty break was announced. The restrooms probably were vacant for much of that time as most everybody headed straight for table 1. I grabbed Andy and got him to the end of the quickly-lengthening queue. Neil Armstrong was starting to meet the Eagle Scouts in the Honor Guard. I ran back to grab my camera and the sheet of the 25th Anniversary of the Moon Landing stamps that I (like a good stamp wonk) brought with me, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, Neil Armstrong would sign it. It quickly became apparent that Neil wasn’t signing anything.
As I was standing in line awaiting my turn to meet Neil Armstrong, it suddenly dawned on me that this was like a scene from a movie. And worse, it was a movie that had already been made. I was Ralphie from “A Christmas Story” on line just before the store closed, ready to meet Santa Claus to tell him of his desire for a Red Rider BB gun. My knees were knocking in anticipation. And it suddenly hit me that anything that came out of my mouth was likely to sound incredibly stupid or banal to this great American hero who walked on the Moon. Despite my earlier thoughts that I have everything in my head together, I realized that I was totally unprepared for this encounter.
My son was in line in front of me. Neil Armstrong tried to read his name tag and stumbled on the last name, as many people do when confronted with a “Frankevicz.” Andy told him that he hoped one day to work for NASA as a robotics engineer. Neil Armstrong congratulated him and told him to keep working hard. Then I jabbed my hands forward and shook Neil Armstrong’s hand, and blurted out that I was so honored and privileged to shake his hand. I blurted out that I grew up on Long Island and my father had friends that worked on the Lunar Module. I asked to take a picture of him and my son together. I was praying that the camera would work and that the green light would go back on quickly so I could get another shot. And then I gave my son the sheet of stamps. “Hold it up, Andy.” I commanded. He obeyed but had a look of disdain in his eyes that said, “Dad, you’re embarrassing the crap out of me.” I only got one shot of my son and Neil Armstrong together, and thankfully I didn’t screw it up. I then told Neil Armstrong that I worked in Sidney, mindlessly blabbering that it’s “a place that has a street named after you,” for a company that deals with postage stamps. I think he was expecting me to ask him to autograph the sheet. But I didn’t ask him to do that. I’d be so embarrassed if he said no. As it was, I felt as if I was impinging upon this man’s privacy by being one of the throng of sycophantic idol-worshipers that he has encountered since 1969.
By this time my head was spinning, my knees were still knocking and my thirty-second brush with greatness was over. Much like when I watched my son’s birth, time seemed to slow, with each exquisite and excruciating millisecond of this encounter burned permanently in my memory. But unlike my son’s birth, I sensed that I came across like an idiot, thinking to myself, “You moron, this is exactly why Neil Armstrong doesn’t go to public functions very often!” And worse, I was expecting some elf, or worse, Neil Armstrong himself, to yell at me, “Come on kid, you’re holding up the line!” and push me down the slide.
After the break the Wright-Patterson Air Force Band played some Boy Scout marches and other songs. A local broadcaster then introduced Neil Armstrong to the crowd in a way that was somewhat unexpected. I’m not sure many people caught how the introduction was worded. Armstrong’s entire resumé was recited, with lots of attention given to all of his test pilot experience and Gemini program work that preceded his historic flight. He was described as just one of the team of three men on the Apollo 11 crew. Though he was the commander of that mission, not once were the words “first man on the moon” uttered, placing him above Buzz Aldrin or Michael Collins. Such an introduction places teamwork above individual glory, and says a lot about why Neil Armstrong is so reticent about being in the spotlight.
Later Neil Armstrong introduced General Metcalf. General Metcalf gave a wonderful speech about the many people in his life that helped him along the way to becoming an Eagle scout. It made me quite proud that my son was helped by so many people on his way to Eagle. Metcalf said that when he asked Neil Armstrong to present the award to him, he was rather shocked that Armstrong said that he would.
At the end of the evening, all of the Eagle Scouts in attendance were asked to go to the stage. My son found his way to a place right in front of the podium, about 7 people from Neil Armstrong. True to form, Neil Armstrong left soon after the ceremonies ended, returning to his self-imposed exile perhaps for another few years, no doubt having had his fill of being in the public spotlight again. I got pictures of Andy next to Doc Goodwin and General Metcalf. From a photographic standpoint, I got pictures of my son with three Distinguished Eagle Scout Award recipients, a pretty nice addition to his Eagle album. From a highlights-of-my-life perspective, the night of Oct. 27, 2009 is in the top five. Hopefully, my son has a goal to shoot for, because only one tenth of one percent of all Eagle Scouts get this award. And hopefully he found this night to be better than yet another night of Halo 3.
