Left: Mike, Neil and Buzz flew
to the moon and back, making
their families beyond proud.
Below (clockwise from top) Mike
Snr, Mike Jr, Kate, Ann and Pat
Collins; Jan, Neil, Ricky and
Mark Armstrong; and Andy,
Jan, Mike, Buzz and Joan Aldrin.Joan reacts to TV coverage
of the end of her husband
Buzz’s mission in 1969.I
n our August 4, 1969 issue,
the Weekly ran a story by
Janet Chusmir that featured
exclusive interviews with the
wives of Apollo 11’s history-
making astronauts, Neil
Armstrong, Mike Collins and
Buzz Aldrin.
To mark 50 years since the
historic moon landing, here is
an edited extract of what Jan
Armstrong, Pat Collins and
Joan Aldrin thought about
their husbands’ mission!
JAN ARMSTRONG
“To Jan Armstrong, the most
important thing in life is for a
person to be content with his
work. On July 16, her husband,
civilian astronaut Neil, went to
work. He blasted off into space
in Apollo 11, and became the
first man to step on the surface
of the moon on July 20.
She didn’t think of telling
him not to; that’s what he
always wanted to do. ‘Because
I understand his love for hiswork, I have never doubted
his capabilities, nor feared his
flight,’ she says. ‘Certainly, he
must occasionally face danger,
but so do many husbands,
and all of us, as wives, have
the same responsibilities.’
If Jan had any fears, any
doubts, any weaknesses, they
didn’t show. She looked pert
and relaxed when I visited her
on a hot Houston night while
she was serving dinner to their
sons, Ricky (12) and Mark (6).
Tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed,
she is wholesome looking, but
she’s a woman who lets you
know where you stand and who
looks life square in the eye.
‘There are no reservations
in my mind,’ she says. Just as
there were none when she and
Neil were married in 1956.
‘I felt then that Neil could
handle any situation,’ she says.
So can Jan. She has always
been that way. Even when she
was a child, her mother, Mrs
Louise Shearon, recalls, ‘If there
was anything that upset her, she
never let me know.’
When her father, a surgeon,
suddenly died of a heart attack
when Jan was 12, ‘She just
accepted it,’ her mother says.
But then the Shearon girls,Jan and her two older
sisters, were raised
to know ‘they had
two feet and we
expected them to
stand on them,’ Mrs
Shearon added.
And so Jan’s
mother didn’t rush
from Pasadena, California to
Houston to hold her daughter’s
hand. ‘She didn’t ask for it. If she
felt she wanted it, she’d have to
let me know.’
Jan doesn’t need hands to
hold. She draws her strength
from faith in the aero-space
programme, what her husband
is trying to accomplish, and the
people and systems behind him.
She remembers when it was
time for Neil to make the final
decision about applying for the
astronaut programme. He asked
her if the possibility of his going
to the moon bothered her. Her
reply was, ‘Yes, but you do as
you think best.’
She feels strongly that ‘what
we cannot understand, we
tend to fear,’ and so she has
tried to learn at least the basic
principles of his work.”
PAT COLLINS
“Pat Collins once told her
husband Mike, ‘We’ll all be
members of the rocking chair
set before they send anyone
into space.’
But Mike rocketed off to the
moon on the Apollo 11 mission
and Pat doesn’t look like a
member of the rocking chair set.
In her late 30s, she is slim and
pretty. When we meet, she has
just finished serving breakfast
to their children, Kate (10), Ann
(7), and Mike (6).
Her husband’s work has been
‘the focal point of our very
existence’, she says. Their
home life has revolved around
his space training, and their
activities as a family are
geared to this schedule.
At the same time, she has
striven to raise her children in a
moral environment; she sees to
it they enter the same activities
as other children. Kate is a girl
scout and Pat carpools Ann
to ballet lessons and Mike to
kindergarten, and helps the
PTA at parties. Because herchildren are so young and
on different schedules, she’s
pretty much homebound.
On the journey to the moon,
Mike’s job was to remain in the
command module orbiting
overhead while Neil and Buzz
made the landing. ‘It was just
an extension of his profession
as a test pilot,’ she said, adding
firmly when asked if she worried
about his occupation, ‘I’m not
coming apart at the seams.’”
JOAN ALDRIN
“When I said to Joan just
before the Apollo 11 flight,
‘Good luck to you and your
husband,’ she replied, ‘He
doesn’t need it but I do.’
Maybe that’s because when
she steps on the stage of the
nearby Clear Creek Country
Theatre she can make-believe- she can play a part and be
someone else.
But when her husband, Buzz,
followed Neil onto the moon’s
surface she couldn’t be an
actress. She could only be
Joan, the woman who once
found his conversation about
space travel and moon
exploration ‘fascinating but
too way out to take seriously.’
She has since had time to
take it very seriously indeed.
‘I’m conditioned,’ she says.
She is an honest person, one
who doesn’t need the prestige
of being an astronaut’s wife. If
you asked her who her husband
was, she’s likely to reply, ‘Oh,
he’s a flyer,’ and you’d be forced
to drag out more details.
Joan doesn’t exude self-
confidence. She thinks of herself
as unimportant. Yet she’s had no
need to rest on her husband’s
laurels. She’s the one with the
recognition of her own because
theatre is a strong interest. It’s
there that Buzz, who helps with
the staging and props, babysits
while she’s in rehearsal and
plays a supporting role.” #