America Loses A 'Reluctant Hero' — Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

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His family called him "a reluctant American hero,' who was just doing his job.  But Neil A. Armstrong, who died Saturday of complications from heart bypass surgery, was a hero. He was just shy of his 39th birthday when he lumbered down the ladder from the Apollo 11 spacecraft and stepped onto the stark lunar landscape on July 20, 1969. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," he said, as Americans around the country watched in awe at the live footage from dark space, so far away. That step fulfilled a challenge President John F. Kennedy issued in the early 1960s —to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Armstrong began his career as a Navy fighter pilot and test pilot before being tapped for a highly selective…

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