Inside Neil Armstrong's boyhood home, at the top of a creaky stairway, sits his bedroom where he launched model airplanes out of the rear window to measure how far they'd fly. Hanging in the room now are autographed photos of astronauts who've visited the privately kept house to see where Armstrong's first steps to the moon began, reports the AP. Owned by a retired history teacher devoted to preserving its past and charming character, the home is for sale for the first time in nearly 40 years. What will become of it remains uncertain. All over Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, there are reminders of his history-making moonwalk. But few places played a bigger role early in his journey than 601 W. Benton St.—the house where the Armstrong family settled in western Ohio when he was a young teenager.
It's where Armstrong built planes out of balsa wood and glue in the dining room and constructed a basement wind tunnel to test his models. He'd often pedal his bike from home to take flying lessons at an airstrip. At age 16, Armstrong made his first solo flight and got his pilot's license. Just 20 years later, he rocketed into space. Today, Armstrong's two-story boyhood home is an occasional stop for visitors of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, even though the house itself isn't open for tours. When Karen Mikesell bought the place in 1988, she had no idea who once lived there until another teacher told her. Mikesell felt a responsibility to "keep it like the Armstrongs had it," she said.
She's hosted nine astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, who flew to the moon with Armstrong in 1969. Aldrin stepped inside the bedroom upstairs a few years after Armstrong died in 2012, Mikesell recalled, "and the tears just streamed down his cheeks." Over the years, she's been given a moon rock and received a piece of gold foil that covered the Apollo 11 capsule—a gift from one of the Navy frogmen who helped recover the command module and its crew. Some astronauts autographed their photos with messages to Mikesell—"thanks for taking such great care of Neil's home!" wrote Mike Foreman, who flew on two space shuttle missions. "You can read books, but you can never have those kinds of experiences that I was able to have because I lived here," she said.
Mikesell, who's 82, said she hopes someone might be willing to buy the house and donate it to the Armstrong museum, which doesn't have the funds to acquire the property, according to Logan Rex, its spokesperson. She is just one of a handful of people who've owned the home since the Armstrongs sold it in the mid-1960s. While the house, which is listed at $430,000, isn't legally protected from alteration, Mikesell is also optimistic that the new owners will respect it—whether it remains a private residence or becomes a place for overnight stays. "It's time to let someone else have the opportunity to be as blessed as I've been," she said, "and to take care of it and keep it as a part of history."
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