In 1969 a 9 year old Ken Schreiber was watching Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon with his family on a black and white TV. Decades later the house where Armstrong grew up in Wapakoneta, Ohio went on the market for the first time in almost 40 years. Schreiber didn’t let that moment go by. He donated $400k to the Auglaize County Historical Society so they could buy it. That’s how it all came about.
A two-story home on West Benton Street
The two story house at 601 West Benton Street in Wapakoneta was the Armstrong home and Neil lived there through his teens. It’s a fairly ordinary family house, which is one of its charms.
Where the flying started
Armstrong spent his formative years here so the house is full of his early story. He built model aircraft in the dining room and had a wind tunnel in the basement which he used to test them.
A pilot before a driver
Often teenagers will be counting down the days until they can drive. Armstrong was different. He got his pilot’s licence at 16, before he’d even got his driving licence and his first solo flight was whilst he was living in this house.
Nearly four decades of careful ownership
Retired history teacher Karen Mikesell was the owner of the house from 1988 and took great care to preserve it as much as possible in the state it was in when the Armstrongs lived there (Spectrum News 1). It went up for sale in August 2026 and a new phase was thus commencing.
From a group effort to one donor
Initially Schreiber asked his friends to contribute towards the purchase. After he’d seen the house himself he decided to foot the entire $400k himself (AP). The sale was completed sometime between 19th and 20th October 2026.
Someone had to step up
Schreiber’s decision was simple really: “I just thought somebody has got to step up to the plate.” It’s less a story about money and more a story of a young fan who has grown up and decided to give something back.
A career spent in the sky
Schreiber knows aviation. He had a 20 year career in the U.S. Air Force as a fighter pilot and subsequently flew for American Airlines. That background makes his connection to Armstrong’s early flying days very much the obvious one.
Bringing back the 1940s
The Auglaize County Historical Society intends to restore the house to the 1940s. That should give the visitor a much better idea of what the rooms looked like in which Armstrong was working on his model planes.
Planning a visit by 2030
Gerald Siesel, president of the historical society, says the aim is to have the house open to the public for tours by 2030 (100 years to the year after Armstrong was born) (AP). For anyone at all interested in spaceflight or local history, it’s definitely something you’ll want to watch the society’s progress on in the run up to that date.
