No Dream Is Too High - Buzz Aldrin Page 0,42

on an exam, a blatant violation of the honor code. If I ignored his actions, I would be as guilty as he was, and I knew the code demanded that failure to report a violation could also lead to expulsion. But if I reported his actions, I ran the risk of it being his word against mine.

I grappled with the dilemma for a while, but really the decision about what I had to do was a foregone conclusion for me. I knew that I had to report the cadet I saw cheating.

I went to my honor representative and reported the incident. He went to the cadet’s room and found the crib notes he had used during the exam, but unfortunately, the honor representative did not confiscate the notes. He merely saw them. Later, the already graded paper that the cadet had used as crib notes disappeared.

When the case came up before the cadet council, all 24 company representatives of the honor committee concluded that an indiscretion had occurred. But because the representative had not retrieved the crib notes as evidence, lacking any tangible proof of the honor code violation, the situation came down to my word against that of the accused cadet. As part of his defense, he implied that I was the one cheating, and that I was jealous of him, so I had lied about him cheating. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth.

In similar situations at West Point, if a cadet was accused of an indiscretion yet there was not enough evidence to prove it, the cadet in question was “silenced”—ostracized and shunned. A borderline statement that was evasive was known as “quibbling”—dodging the issue and covering an honor violation. But when I reported the cheating incident, the commandant refused to allow the cadet in question to be silenced. Perhaps because of the cadet’s popularity, he was able to weather the storm, and he was never shunned. In fact, the man involved went on to become a decorated general; I went to war in Korea.

As it turned out, the incident that I had witnessed was only the tip of the iceberg. The following year, 90 cadets were dismissed from West Point for cheating, including our star quarterback and 36 other members of the Army football team. It was one of the largest scandals ever to rock a U.S. military academy.

Thanks to round-the-clock news coverage, as well as social media covering the latest scandal or public indiscretions nowadays, most of us barely blink when we are informed of another sordid mess involving a public official, a military officer, or even a minister. But in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such breaches of integrity and other “moral failures” were considered serious matters, especially at our nation’s military academies.

I graduated third in my class at West Point in 1951, but reporting the cheater cost me some good friendships and, no doubt, some good future connections. Nevertheless, I never regretted doing the right thing. Some people might say, “But Buzz, what’s the use of being honest if the cheater goes free and you are the one who suffers?”

I didn’t see it that way, and I didn’t want to back away from West Point’s strict honor principles, nor did many others at the academy. Moreover, some recognized that I respected the rules of the academy, and that I could be trusted. That paid huge dividends in my future.

YEARS LATER, WHILE STANDING ON the lunar surface, Neil Armstrong and I were informed that someone wanted to speak with us. The next voice we heard said, “Hello, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you from the Oval Room[Office] of the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House.”

Neil and I paused our activity and listened as the president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, talked to us “long-distance” and expressed congratulations and the pride of America.

“I just can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have done,” the president said. “For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives, and for people all over the world, I am sure that they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world, and as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility