Neil was determined to fly. Port Koneta airfield was nearby. (Today it’s the Wapakoneta Neil Armstrong Airport.) As a teenager Neil took part-time jobs to pay for flying lessons.
He mowed the lawn at a cemetery. He helped bake doughnuts at a doughnut company—more than 1,300 a night. He got the job at the doughnut company because he was small enough to climb inside the dough mixer and clean it! All this extra money went to flying lessons. By the time Neil was fifteen, he had earned his pilot’s license. Now he knew how to fly a plane, but he was still too young to drive!
At Blume High School, only six blocks from his home, Neil wasn’t a top student. But he was better than average. Like his mother, he was musical. He played baritone horn in a jazz band called the Mississippi Moonshiners.
From the time he learned to read, he loved books. In his first year of elementary school he read more than a hundred! In high school, his favorite subjects were science and math. He wanted to go on to college; he wanted to learn more about planes and how they flew.
The Armstrongs were not poor. They owned their home; they had a car; there was always enough food. But money was still tight. And a college education was very expensive. Neil, however, was able to attend Purdue University in Indiana on a Navy scholarship. He wanted to study aeronautic engineering—how planes are built and what makes them fly. In return for the scholarship money, Neil had to serve in the U.S. Navy.
This arrangement was fine with Neil. In the Navy, he could fly planes! |