From the Dust, Humble Inspiration

By Shawn Conrad, CAE

What a nostalgic week we just experienced.  Every time I turned on the TV to watch the news or click on a website to read the headlines, I was reminded that a Saturn V rocket made its historic journey to the moon 50 years ago–July 20, 1969. I still have vivid memories of watching Neil Armstrong descend from the spacecraft and land three feet below in a puff of moon dust. I watched it live with my family in black or white on a rather old Sylvania television.

All of my siblings knew it was going to be a special night when our parents announced we were all going to stay up to watch the moon landing. This didn’t happen often (never) and we took it all in while broadcaster Walter Cronkite tried to talk us through the historic landing.

Within all the tributes being lauded on Neil Armstrong since he made that historic leap, I think the one that stands out the most for me is how everyone described him as being extremely humble. It was well known by his friends and most reporters that from the landing in 1969 until his passing in 2012, Mr. Armstrong didn’t like all of the attention nor want all the adulation that came from being the first man to walk on the moon. His usual tactic when asked was to direct the attention to the thousands of NASA employees and their contractors who he felt made the impossible, possible.

From any planet, Neil Armstrong was a remarkable man.

Shawn Conrad, CAE, is IPMI’s CEO.