CINCINNATI (AP) — While friends and colleagues praised Ohio native Neil Armstrong on Saturday as an American hero, the head of a museum named for him prepared for an influx of visitors wanting to honor the famed astronaut.

The western Ohio native commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969. He died Saturday following complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family said.

The executive director of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta said Saturday that the museum didn't hear news of his death until late afternoon and most visitors apparently didn't know.

Executive Director Chris Burton hung a black ribbon on a plaque honoring Armstrong in the museum's entryway, where plaques honor all 25 of Ohio's astronauts, and lowered the museum's flag to half-staff in honor of the 82-year-old astronaut.

A single bunch of flowers and numerous cards were left outside the museum door Saturday evening, and Burton expected more tokens and condolences in the coming days.

Friends and colleagues paid homage to Armstrong throughout the day.

"When I think of Neil, I think of someone who for our country was dedicated enough to dare greatly," friend John Glenn, another Ohioan and the first American to orbit the Earth, said.

William Burleigh, a friend and former CEO of The E.W. Scripps Co., said in a telephone interview from his Cincinnati-area home that Armstrong was "really an American hero."

Burleigh said he met Armstrong around 1980 when Armstrong was teaching engineering at the University of Cincinnati and they became good friends.

"I got to see a side of Neil that was very tender, compassionate and caring," Burleigh said. "He was a very reserved fellow, but for his friends, he had a very large heart."

Charles Mechem, former CEO of Taft Broadcasting Co. and former commissioner of the LPGA, was another longtime friend who noted Armstrong's desire for privacy.

"There was nothing mysterious about his privacy or his desire not to be in the limelight," Mechem said. "It was partly just his way, but it also was partly because he never felt that one person should be singled out because there was so much support and so many people did so many things to allow him to do what he did."

"I asked him once if he was apprehensive or nervous about his on-the-moon flight," Mechem said. "He said that he wasn't because everyone had planned for it for months and months and worked hard to get ready for it."

Mechem said Armstrong told him that everyone was simply doing what they were trained to do."

"That was just the way he looked at it," said Mechem.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said it was Armstrong's "humble and gracious response to the torrent of attention that followed his accomplishments that may have set him apart most."

Burton noted that a lot of people throughout the years would stop after touring the museum to ask more about Armstrong as a person.

"They have asked what Armstrong was really like, and I'm sure they will continue to ask that," he said.