I was kind of late coming to rock and roll. My parents graduated from high school in 1950 and 1955, so they were more into the music of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby than Elvis or Chuck Berry. And since I was an eldest child I didn't have older siblings bringing rock and roll home either. I wasn't completely unaware of the music of course, various rock groups did appear on the TV variety shows or were covered on the news. I often say that my first memory of the Beatles was news coverage of their breakup. But as I moved towards the mid 70's and high school, I began to pay more attention to contemporary music. I was really into the singer/songwriter era of the 70's, but I also was discovering older groups, including, especially, The Beatles. I especially took to John Lennon's solo work, particularly Imagine. I didn't have a lot of financial resources in high school to buy music, but by college I was able to but records occasionally (they were still records then) and I remember picking up a copy of Double Fantasy as soon as it came out. I had just recently sent in a card for a subscription to Rolling Stone also. And that was December 8, 1980, which I still remember with such clarity.
I was still living with my parents then (Rent free as long as I stayed in college) and as usual for a Monday Night, we were watching the Football game. Monday Night Football was an event in and of itself. It was what people talked about the next day, even if they didn't normally follow football. My dad was a die hard football fan, so we always watched. We weren't particularly interested in the teams playing that night, but this was the pre-cable era and choices were much more limited.
And then we saw and heard this:
I don't remember the rest of the game. I just remember it being over and saying goodnight to my dad and heading up to my room to listen to the radio all night. I remember having the presence of mind to turn on my cassette recorder at some point during the night and taping off the radio. First I figured I would want to remember what I heard that night, and second, I didn't have many Beatles recordings. And the next week my first issue of Rolling Stone arrived, with its now iconic Annie Leibovitz cover. I know I walked through the next few days, reading all the papers (insert joke about the opening lines of :"A Day in the Life" here), watching all the news.
I found it somewhat frustrating that no one in my immediate circle felt quite the way I did. I longed to be somewhere like Central Park in New York, with the ongoing memorials that lasted for days. Those people were at least having company in their mourning. As someone who was born at the beginning of the 60's, I was hardly new to the idea of assassinations or death by violence. Although I have only the faintest recollection of JFK's death, I have vivid memories of the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; of Kent State (only 15 miles from my home, much covered in the local papers) and many others. And I had observed the hysteria of Elvis' death 3 years earlier as well. Lennon's death was like the perfect storm of all these events coming together.A music icon dying violently. And I, just a few months short of my 21st birthday, felt this was the worst coming of age gift ever.
Since then I have listened to a lot of Beatles music and a lot of Lennon's solo music. It has certainly stood the test of time, at least to me. Just like a really good book I find new things each time I listen. And as I get older many songs take on different meanings.
My most profound feeling, at the time, was of being robbed. Robbed of his talent, of his presence, of the music. Only one other time in my adult life have I felt so profoundly cheated by the creativity gods, and that was when Jim Henson died.
Time as the cliche says went on. A couple years later I finally found a friend who felt as I did about Lennon, the Beatles, and the 8th of December. It was she who accompanied me to Strawberry Fields some 31 years after the events. There was a certain closure to that moment, of a quest of sorts fulfilled.
Its ironic that this comes one day after a day burned in the memories of so many other people. Pearl Harbor may have been America's first instantaneous tragedy, everyone in the country was involved as soon as they heard it on the radio. And everyone of that generation knew exactly where they were and what they were doing on the date that would live in infamy. And to this day I remember how I felt that night, and the days after. It's burned into my memory. I can't sit down to watch Monday Night Football with my son, or hear a recording of Howard Cosell without being plunged backward into that moment in time more than 30 years in the past.
This post was going to be a rant about Lance Armstrong and how hard it is for parents when someone your child regards as a hero turns out to be a jerk or a cheat (or both). But just as I was working myself up into a proper state of indignation, word came out that Neil Armstrong had died. My indignation fled, to be replaced with a warm feeling of gratitude and admiration, and musing thoughts about what real heroes really are.
Neil Armstrong was a hero. Because he and his fellow moon astronauts made it back from their missions safely, its easy to forget how many things had to work perfectly for that to happen, including Mr Armstrong taking over the controls and manually flying the lunar lander when the computer couldn't find a good spot to set down. And when he set foot on the moon he called attention not to what he had done (one small step for man) but what we had done (one giant leap for mankind).
All this is burned into my memory because on a summer night in 1969 my father woke my siblings and myself up at 1am to watch this happen. It was,he said on of the most important moments in history, and we had the chance to it live, as it was happening. He said we needed to remember it, and as you see I did. I still have a book he bought me with the history of the space program, culminating in the Apollo 11 mission.
I find I have 3 kinds of heroes. One is a creative hero, someone I admire for the quality of work they put out over a lifetime, and for the effects this work has upon others: people like Jim Henson, John Lennon or Joseph Campbell.
Another kind of hero is one I call a character hero, there is a heroic quality is in the way they live their lives. Often they are people who have overcome obstacles (Helen Keller, King George VI) or advocated for peace (the Dali Lama). Sometimes a person can start something on a small scale that winds up changing the world (Eunice Kennedy Shriver). All of them reach beyond their own individual needs to look to the needs of others.
Then there are what I think of as Achievement heroes, someone is who is faster, better or first. Although I can admire such achievements, to think of someone as a hero I want to see what they do with the rest of their lives as well. For example, one of my heroes has always been Sir Edmund Hillary, ever since I read his account of the Conquest of Everest when I was a child. It wasn't only the achievement itself, it was how he wrote about it, right down to not saying whether it was himself, or Tenzing Norgay, his guide, who reached the summit first, because it was their achievement. As I got older I admired him even more for leveraging his fame to advocate for conservation causes and for the people of Nepal.
Armstrong took a different approach to fame--he walked away. Trained as an engineer before he went into the service, and then to NASA (he was an Eagle Scout too, by the way, you Knew I'd slip that in) he went to the University of Cincinnati and taught aerospace engineering. He seldom did interviews or made speeches, but just went about his business, which is what he maintained he was doing on the moon too. His job.
His family has asked that if people wish to remember him, they take a walk on a clear night and look at the moon and think of him. A hero doing his job.
Update 8/31/12
This morning as I was waiting at the bus stop I observed this beautiful Harvest Moon and did think of Neil Armstrong. I suspect it will be awhile before I look at one and not think of him.
