Ken Schreiber, a retired airline pilot, remembers being 9 years old, huddled with his family around a 12-inch black-and-white television to watch Neil A. Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon.
More than five decades after that historic Apollo 11 mission, Mr. Schreiber, 66, was scanning headlines on his iPad over the summer when he saw a news article saying that Mr. Armstrong’s boyhood home in Wapakoneta, Ohio, was going on the market. He called the listing agent.
“No foundation or historical society is buying it?” he recalled asking incredulously. “So somebody could just go there and buy it and sell off all the memorabilia and sell the house or rent it out and just let it go to crap?”
That didn’t sit well with Mr. Schreiber, who grew up about 35 miles away in Dayton with dreams of becoming a pilot. He grew up hearing about Mr. Armstrong’s accomplishments, including his service as a fighter pilot in the Navy.
At 18, Mr. Schreiber left Ohio for the U.S. Air Force Academy. He was a fighter pilot and spent 10 years on active duty and another 10 in the reserves. He retired as an American Airlines pilot after 32 years.
Mr. Schreiber pondered the sale and called the agent back a few weeks later, disappointed to learn there were still no offers.
He was determined to preserve the home, but with his primary residence in Islamorada, Fla., he couldn’t commit to its upkeep.
With advice from his accountant, he made an offer of a $400,000 donation to help the Auglaize County Historical Society purchase the home. (His gift covered the $400,000 sale price.)
That was money Mr. Schreiber had set aside for charity, intending to support causes for sick children and veterans.
“To me, it was worth the money,” he said.
Mr. Schreiber had visited the house soon after making the offer but wasn’t able to attend the closing on Monday because of his sciatica.
“Kind of funny — retired airline pilot couldn’t ride on an airplane,” he said with a chuckle.
Just after the historical society became the home’s new owner on Monday, its director, Rachel Barber, said the group hoped to work toward restoring the three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom house, built in 1908, to the way it looked in 1944 when the Armstrong family moved in.
Mr. Armstrong was a high school freshman at the time, Ms. Barber said. He rode his bike to a small airfield and got his pilot’s license when he was 16 years old. Airplane magazines he subscribed to were sent to the home, on Benton Street, and Wapakoneta, about an hour north of Dayton, was the hometown he listed when he applied to NASA, she said.
“People who are interested in space know Wapakoneta would be considered Neil’s hometown,” Ms. Barber said. Today it has a population of 10,000.
The ultimate goal, she said, is to open the house to public tours by 2030 — for Mr. Armstrong’s centennial birth year.
That was always the goal for its previous owner, Karen Mikesell, who lived in the home for 38 years while reserving a bedroom for a collection of items related to the astronaut.
Paintings, photos and memorabilia from the 50th anniversary of the moon landing cover the bedroom’s walls.
Ms. Mikesell, a retired history teacher and school administrator, decided to sell after getting married at 78 years old three years ago, said the listing agent, Beverly Rex-Cook of Ron Spencer Real Estate.
The couple decided to live in the husband’s single-level home, she said.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
