No Dream Is Too High - Buzz Aldrin Page 0,19

from the original Navy carrier, U.S.S. Hornet. A portion of his Medal of Honor citation, presented personally by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, reads: “With the apparent certainty of being forced to land in enemy territory or perish at sea, Colonel Doolittle personally led a squadron of Army bombers, manned by volunteer crews, in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland.” But Doolittle did not perish. In fact, Doolittle later became my primary mentor, not merely in aviation, but in life.

My father won a Piper Cub airplane in a radio station contest—yes, he actually won an airplane. That sure beats winning a couple of tickets to a rock concert anytime! I was two years old when my father took me on my first airplane ride in a red-and-white plane dubbed the Eagle. That first flight made an indelible impression on me. I loved being airborne in the Eagle and could hardly wait to fly again. Ironically, years later, when Neil Armstrong and I landed on the Moon, the lunar module in which we landed was named the Eagle.

All of my accomplishments in the years ahead were tucked in that airplane seat along with me as a little boy, and it has been quite a journey as the dreams and goals I had as a child have come to fruition. I’m a lucky guy, because in many ways—some planned and some experienced while rolling with the punches—I have managed to fulfill my grandest dreams, and so much more. Along the way, I’ve interacted with some truly extraordinary people.

I enjoy noticing some of the unusual precursors to my future success, things such as my mother’s maiden name of Moon, and that my first airplane flight was in a plane dubbed the Eagle. Here’s another: While I was at West Point, I met a guy named Winston Markey who wanted to design rockets. Winston became the valedictorian of our class. Next to his photo in my copy of our yearbook, Winston wrote, “I’ll build them; you fly them!”

And he did. And I did. Winston went on to become a rocket engineer and later moved into government circles where he influenced the future of space exploration.

Coincidences? Maybe. Or maybe my course was set long before I realized. People today often think I am being modest or overly humble when I say that I was simply a guy who was at the right place at the right time, but it is true. A series of serendipitous events, many of them over which I had no control and some of them even tragic, catapulted me into position for advancement.

But even as a little boy, I loved building model airplanes and became enamored with comic books featuring fictional space travelers such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. I was extremely curious and everything about aviation fascinated me.

I was 11 years old in 1941 when the Japanese attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, so all through my early teens, I read newspapers and watched black-and-white newsreels of the various bombing campaigns in Europe and in the Pacific, studying with interest the Spitfire battles over Britain, the American planes engaged in battles against the Japanese Zeroes, and the deadly dive-bombers of the German Luftwaffe.

As an adolescent, I became interested in the mechanics of airplanes, how they functioned, and how we could make them better. When my father landed a P-38 at an airport near our home after the war, I noticed the little things; for instance, the rivets on the P-38 were not flush, as they are today on most planes. We need to improve that, I thought. Eventually, we did.

As I prepared to graduate from high school, I had several choices. My father preferred that I attend the Naval Academy, even though he had spent 38 years serving in the Army Air Corps, but I chose instead to attend West Point in 1947. I took an oath to serve my country, and that has been the guiding force in my life ever since. Not comfortable living, good-paying jobs, getting rich in the stock market, or living a life of luxury, but serving my country in the best way that I could—that has been my guiding principle.

I’ve had my share of setbacks and disappointments in life. When I returned from the Moon, I fell into a series of depressions and bouts with alcohol because I had great difficulty finding something meaningful to do. After you have done what no human beings have done in all of history and