Neil Armstrong, George Washington's Hair, & Incarnation
In 2002, when I was on a research fellowship at the American Philosophical Society (APS), which holds two locks of Geo. Washingon's hair, combing though archival evidence that would later be key in my George Washington's Hair, the late Robert Cox--a historian, archivist and author whom I, and many others, remember for his competence, enthusiasm, and generosity--mentioned that Neil Armstrong--yes, that Neil Armstrong--was at the APS to receive an award, and, Robert invited me to walk over to the auditorium where it was being presented to Armstrong to see if we could catch a glimpse of former Apollo 11 commander. We arrived just as the moon man excited the ceremony to handshakes and other pleasantries with his fellow APS members. Suddenly, I found myself face-to-face with Neil Armstrong--looking older, and to my mind, shorter, than in the old Kodachrome photos from his NASA years. He made eye contact, and I knew that I must either reach out for a handshake, or....
I didn't. The moment, and the man passed. I congratulated myself at having resisted the temptation to use my temporary APS badge to touch the living icon who, I had remembered from news stories, hated shaking hands with strangers.
Instead I'd followed, in effect, the self-consciously decorous example of Sarah Haines, who, in a letter that I had found in the APS's archives wrote that when Lafayette visited Philadelphia she was “shocked at the unceremonious manner in which was treated[;] one of the" welcoming "committee,...having read to him a grossly flattering address,...took the General by the arm and said to the audience the General will walk round for the ladies to look at.” The living link to George Washington “passed close by me and many near me without any introduction shook hands with him.” At first, she had her own hands “raised for the purpose but the thought arose whether or not it would not be evincing my regard for him more firmly to spare him that shake than to give it,” As Haines let the opportunity pass she chortled over how “humanity” itself "decended [sic] in his presence . . . ; it seemed from what I saw that he must suffer from such violent exercise of arm.”Whether Sarah Haines ever regretted not shaking Lafayette's hand, I've ocassionally looked back with a tinge of sadness at my failure to clasp Neil Armstrong's hand.
Rationally, of course, I know that I forfeited nothing of which one could take cognizance, say, scientifically. No aura, no cultic power, no latent lunar luminescence, nothing of material import, would have been transferred from him to me had I seized the opportunity (and the astronaut) and shared a handshake with Neil Armstrong.
Is my tinge of regret nuts? I think that it's characteristically human. As I wrote in George Washington's hair, human beings have an abiding desire to know our heroes as incarnate, like unto ourselves.
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