Warren couple discover link to 'first man on moon'

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

When Frank and Shirley Weatherby moved into a rented home on Homewood Avenue Southeast near Trumbull Memorial Hospital in 1965, they didn’t know they were living in the boyhood home of astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Four years later, Armstrong, the commander of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first person to step foot on the moon July 20, 1969 — 50 years ago. The anniversary was celebrated Saturday across the nation and locally, including at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library, where about 25 people watched NASA footage of the rocket launch, moon landing and splashdown.

The Weatherbys were like most Americans when the moon walk occurred – captivated by hearing Armstrong say those famous words – “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” At the time, they still didn’t know Armstrong had lived in the upstairs part of their home.

It wasn’t until 1972 when the Weatherbys learned from a neighbor a few doors down in the 300 block that Armstrong and his family had lived in their home near Trumbull Memorial Hospital.

“He said they lived upstairs for a while,” Shirley said of the neighbor, whose last name was Wilcox. He and his wife had lived there all their lives, including the early 1930s, when the Armstrong family lived on Homewood. The neighbor told Shirley he knew of Neil because the Armstrongs lived next door to him.

“I guess he was like a baby, just real young, an infant or a toddler, one of the two, I’m not sure,” Shirley said of Neil Armstrong.

The Vindicator obtained independent verification of one aspect of the Armstrongs having lived on Homewood.

The Warren Health Department has the birth certificate of June Armstrong, younger sister of Neil Armstrong, who was born July 6, 1933, in Warren. The birth certificate says her family’s residence when she was born was on Homewood Avenue, next door to Shirley and her husband.

Author James R. Hansen in his book “First Man” said the Armstrongs lived in Warren three times — 1930, 1933 and 1936, though the reference to 1936 is apparently when the family lived on Mahoning Avenue in Champion, where the Armstrong family lived when Neil attended first grade in Champion School District.

The Armstrong family moved 16 times from 1930, the year Neil was born near Wapakoneta , outside Dayton, until 1944, Hansen’s book says. The family moved so much because Armstrong’s father, Stephen, worked as an examiner in a division of the Ohio Auditor’s Office. His assignments required him to move from town to town.

Stephen Armstrong’s first assignment was in Lisbon, Columbiana County, in 1930, where he was working at the time of Neil’s birth. Neil’s brother, Dean, was born in Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Feb. 22, 1935. Neil Armstrong attended part of first grade in Champion schools in 1936, the school district’s records confirm.

“I was so excited when I realized it,” Shirley Weatherby said of learning in 1972 of her home’s connection to Neil Armstrong. “I thought that’s really something that he lived in this house. I was just very proud of that.”

An area newspaper published an article that listed her address and the one next door as locations where the Armstrongs had lived. But until a Vindicator reporter came to her home recently asking about it, no one had ever come asking about it before, she said.

After Saturday afternoon’s presentation at the library, Kathy Funtulis of Champion said she was a teen when she watched the moon landing on TV at her parents’ house on Maryland Avenue in Youngstown.

“I was very proud to see the USA banners, she said of the markings on the lunar module. “It was us [America] up there.”

Her husband, Jim, who watched the landing from his home on Sheridan Avenue in Warren, said he remembers the “feeling of pride in the neighborhood.”

About about a billion people watched the landing and space walk on TV.

Armstrong took his first airplane ride at an airstrip on Parkman Road Northwest in Warren, the present location of the First Flight Lunar Module, built to memorialize that flight and Armstrong’s historic first step on the moon.