Los Angeles Times (MCT)

When Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, on July 20, 1969, he uttered a phrase that has been carved in stone and quoted across the planet: “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”

Armstrong, who had heart surgery in early August, died Saturday in Cincinnati at 82, said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs. The cause was complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family announced.

In a statement, President Barack Obama said that when Armstrong stepped on the moon, “he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”

And when Armstrong and his two fellow crew members lifted off from Earth in Apollo 11, “they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation,” Obama said. “They set out to show the world that American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible.”

“Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with grace and humility that was an example to us all,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on his grandfather’s farm near Wapakoneta, Ohio, and had a happy and conventional upbringing.

His civil servant father, Stephen Armstrong, audited county records in Ohio and later served as assistant director of the Ohio Mental Hygiene and Corrections Department. The family of his mother, Viola, owned the farm.

At age 6 he took a ride in a transport plane, then rushed home and began building model airplanes and a wind tunnel to test them.

In 1945, he started taking flying lessons, paying for them by working as a stock clerk at a drugstore. On his 16th birthday, he got his pilot’s license but didn’t yet have a driver’s license.

Upon graduating from high school in 1947, he attended Purdue University on a Navy scholarship. By the time the Korean War started in 1950, Armstrong had been called to active duty.

After flight training, Armstrong was assigned to the carrier Essex, flying combat missions over North Korea. Although one of the Panther jets he flew off the carrier was crippled by enemy fire, he nursed the plane back over South Korea before bailing out safely.

He returned to Purdue and earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.

Within months, he was a civilian test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

By 1963, NASA was striving to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of beating the Soviet Union in the space race and putting an American on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy wanted some civilian astronauts, and Armstrong was one of the first.

On July 20, 1969, at 1:04:40 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, the small spacecraft came to rest gently near the moon’s dry Sea of Tranquillity.

“The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong radioed back to Earth.

The closest Armstrong came to describing what the Apollo 11 mission meant to him was during a Life magazine interview several weeks before the flight.

“The single thing which makes any man happiest is the realization that he has worked up to the limits of his ability, his capacity,” Armstrong said. “It’s all the better, of course, if this work has made a contribution to knowledge, or toward moving the human race a little farther forward.”