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Heroes and Fallen Heroes… A Tale of Two Armstrongs
Written by Jimmy
This needs a soundtrack, a song sorely missing from the Olympics Closing Ceremony:
Now some sadness, some extreme, some not so bad.
Not so bad, after a rich and wonderful life we lost Neil Armstrong this week. First man on the moon. Brave, shy in the limelight. For our generation, the moon landing was our ‘where were you moments?’. I was in Arlington Virginia watching the landing watching a black and white TV in our ‘basement’ family room with the whole family. All grainy black and white, barely visible. The pretty pictures followed much later. My parents met Armstrong a couple times at Air Force functions and I ended up with a collection of astronauts representing 7 of the 12 that walked on the moon. He was a massive hero, when all astronauts were heros. We wrote about all this in talking about our song Major Matt Mason (click here). But lhe lived a full life, so we can celebrate.
Extreme sadness is left for the fall of Lance Armstrong. We all wanted to believe he was clean. There are a lot of people he has helped immeasurably who believed he was clean. A lot of cancer survivors. So all of us bought the lies. I watched a programme on how big his heart was and was content that this explained performance. I heard the testimony of the early folks who said he cheated, but then I heard Lance discredit them, arguing ‘who can believe a doper?’ So I believed Lance. But now I’m reading horrible articles. It appears that not only did he use, but he was the king doper, running the whole thing with the team. This isn’t ‘victim’ its ‘executioner.’ Now, I want not to believe. But you know what, I’m tired of believing in this Armstrong any more. So sad.
But luckily, even though we’ve had heroes fallen and heroes crashed, we have a lot of heroes rising. My favourites for now:
To Neil!
Jimmy