A retired military fighter pilot who was 9 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon has stepped forward to save the astronaut’s boyhood home in Wapakoneta, donating $400,000 so the Auglaize County Historical Society can buy the house and one day open it for public tours. The sale is scheduled to be finalized Monday.
Ken Schreiber read a story in August that the two-story home at 601 W. Benton St. was for sale, and later learned no one had come forward to preserve it. “I just thought somebody has got to step up to the plate,” Schreiber said, recalling his father’s advice to “make a mark in life.” Schreiber spent 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and retired as a pilot with American Airlines.
The Armstrong family bought the house in 1944 after moving often for the future astronaut’s father’s work as a government auditor. It is where young Neil built model planes from balsa wood and glue in the dining room, built a basement wind tunnel to test them, and launched models out of his upstairs bedroom window to measure how far they would fly.
The historical society plans to restore the well-preserved home to its appearance during Armstrong’s boyhood in the 1940s. Society president Gerald Siesel said researchers have already begun studying what the house looked like then and talking with community leaders about raising money to renovate and maintain it.
The goal, Siesel said, is to have the home ready for its first public tours by 2030, marking the 100th anniversary of Armstrong’s birth. “Even now when this opportunity came our way, we realized we can’t do it ourselves,” he said of the community effort the project will require.
The house has long been a stop for visitors to the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta who want to see where the astronaut’s early life unfolded, but it has never been open to the public. Its longtime owner, a retired history teacher who bought it in 1988, kept it much as the Armstrongs had it and hosted nine visiting astronauts over the years.
Armstrong earned his pilot’s license at 16 after pedaling his bike from the house to flying lessons at a local airstrip. Twenty years after his first solo flight he rocketed into space, and in 1969 he became the first person to step on the moon. The historical society’s purchase keeps the starting point of that journey in public hands.
Photo: Joe Ross, CC BY-SA