Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [152]
OVER THE YEARS I’ve received a number of awards and recognitions from many fine organizations, but one that I have especially cherished is from the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Each year the association inducts new members into its prestigious group, chosen because of adversities they have overcome. Our friends Diane and Harry Rinker nominated me for membership, and I was inducted in 2005. The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans culls hundreds of nominations to make the selections for each award, so I was deeply honored. Moreover, the organization comprises mostly multimillionaires who started from humble, sometimes destitute, beginnings, but are now living the American dream. Members of the association sponsor more than $5 million in need-based scholarships for aspiring college students.
In my acceptance speech, I acknowledged that most people in the association had experienced trying circumstances before achieving success. I, however, achieved the greatest success, universally acclaimed as one of mankind’s most extraordinary achievements to date, and then found adversity crouching at my door, waiting to trip me up. Once entangled, I didn’t unwittingly fall into depression and alcoholism; I took willful steps in the wrong direction, thinking I could turn around at any point. But like a motorboat idling on the Niagara River, I soon found myself being swept along, past the point of no return, out of control, drowning my sorrows and disappointments in alcohol, and heading for the precipice and ultimate destruction.
Having been to the moon, I plummeted into my own personal hell on Earth. Had it not been for some friends who cared enough to call a drunk a drunk, even if he had walked on the moon, I might have perished. I will always be grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous for saving my life, and for helping me to sustain now more than thirty years of sobriety.
But, thankful as I am to my friends in AA, it wasn’t they who motivated me to see the best in myself. For that, I will be forever indebted to a petite little bundle of loving energy, my wife, Lois. She helped me to believe in myself, and she believed in me so much that she was willing to do whatever it took to help me fulfill my dreams. As I accepted the Horatio Alger Award, I looked over at Harry Rinker and said, “Thank you, Harry, for nominating me for this great honor and for being a true friend.”
Then I looked at Lois, and I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. With great emotion, I expressed what anyone who has known me already knew, that she was not merely the wind beneath my wings, she was the wind behind me, under me, and in front of me. “And thank you, Lois, for standing behind me and supporting me and leading me these last nineteen years.”
I went on to express one of the key facts of my life; I have been most fortunate to be consistently at the right place at the right time. “I am truly humbled and honored to receive the Horatio Alger Award, not only for what it signifies, but also because I respect and revere so many of the members who have come before me. One in particular who has gone before me in aviation is General Jimmy Doolittle, who led the bombing raid on Tokyo and was inducted into this association in 1972. The title of his autobiography is I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. And that’s exactly how I feel about so many things in my life. My talents and motivations combined to put me in the right place at the right time and propelled me into a career that