The parents of Neil Armstrong pose with the Abraham family. (One Small Visit Film Ltd.) |
"Ultimately, it’s a story between two very different families finding connection and a shared humanity; a testament to taking leaps of faith and small acts of openness and kindness that make a difference," Jo Chim, the writer of the film, told Vargas. Chim found out about the visit from Anisha Abraham who, as a one-month-old, accompanied her mother, grandmother and father on the road trip. Abraham, now a pediatrician in D.C., said she grew up hearing the stories of the visit from her family.
Abraham described the "the stares and whispers her mother, Nirmala Abraham, and grandmother, Elizabeth George, drew as they walked through the town in their flowing saris and how her father grew nervous when her grandmother suggested they knock on the door of Armstrong’s parents’ home to pay their respect," Vargas writes. The Armstrong family invited the Abrahams inside to talk and connect. Chim wrote the film after seeing divisions deepen globally during the pandemic and sees the story as a way of "issues of race, identity and belonging," Vargas reports.
"In the film, Neil Armstrong talks about how looking at Earth from space made him feel small and the planet look fragile," Vargas writes. "He describes the view as allowing a person to see that borders between countries don’t exist." A notable photo from the visit shows the Abraham family standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the astronaut's parents. Neil Armstrong is not in the photo. He was holding the camera and taking the picture. He just happened to be visiting his parents at the time, when Wapakoneta had just over 7,000 people. It now has about 10,000. Armstrong died in 2012.
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