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Neil Armstrong

Hello All, I'd really appreciate some feedback on the Neil Armstrong signature below... This was was found among the personal effects of my recently deceased father-in-law but I'm not sure of the exact timeframe as the letter is not dated.

Any thoughts or opinions would be very much appreciated!

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on November 21, 2020 at 5:56pm

Secretarial I think. Ask Steve Zarelli. He is thr best.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on November 21, 2020 at 5:58pm

Please post the entire letter, too. There will be an education in that as well.

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Permalink Reply by nickmc211 on November 21, 2020 at 6:02pm

No problem at all, here is the full body of the letter.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Peters on November 21, 2020 at 8:03pm

I would give that a "thumbs up".

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on November 21, 2020 at 9:09pm

It seems to look a lot like these secretarials, esp lower left - I may well be wrong:

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Permalink Reply by nickmc211 on November 21, 2020 at 9:23pm

Thanks to those who have weighed in this far. I don’t have an exact date but I believe this would have likely been received in the late 80s or 90s. I do know my father-in-law knew Armstrong and had business dealings with him (in the aviation industry) so it’s entirely possible his request would have been given more attention than a normal request of this nature.

I’m not sure of his secretarial habits (as my collecting is mostly limited to baseball) so I really do appreciate the feedback.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on November 21, 2020 at 9:37pm

It may well be good. Lets see what Steve has to say.

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Permalink Reply by hbw60 on November 21, 2020 at 10:27pm

As mentioned, Steve Zarelli is the best person to ask. If he doesn't see this here, he has an email authentication service on his website, so you can send it there. He's considered the biggest space expert in the industry.

I'm not an autograph expert, but I am a huge Armstrong fan who's very familiar with his signature. I'm not good enough to be a reliable judge, but I'm leaning toward the signature being real. If you look at the bottom of the letter, you'll see the annotation "NAA:vw". This indicates that the letter was actually written by Vivian White, who was his secretary from 1980 until his death in 2012. Armstrong stopped signing in the mid-nineties, so this can be timed somewhere in that era, just as you estimated. During that time, Armstrong wasn't as hounded for signatures as he was in previous years; and he rarely (if ever) used a secretarial signature at the time, because he had fewer requests. Most of the secretarial Armstrong signatures were done by his official aides at NASA and the University where he worked in the seventies. From 1980, after he hired Vivian, I don't think she signed on his behalf. I believe the letter was typed by Vivian, but signed by Neil. His signature changed over the years, and this looks like one of his later-year signatures to me.

But that's just my amateur opinion. If Steve says it's real, then it's real.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on November 21, 2020 at 9:41pm

I am moved this discussion to our astronaut and space forum. Steve Zarelli is the moderator and is the top space autograph authenticator. He’ll probably see this and give his opinion tomorrow.