I can’t speak to Neil Armstrong’s personal wealth, but someone with that resume probably left a high 7 figure, low 8 figure estate. So would be considered “pretty comfortably wealth.”
A director is never “honorary”, they always have voting power. How important an individual director’s position is will vary a lot.
It’s probably worth quickly (or as quickly as I can) explaining corporate structure.
A typical corporation, the “boss” of the corporation is usually someone with the title CEO (sometimes President, and often times one person will be have both the President & CEO title.) A CEO “reports” to a board of directors. The board doesn’t normally have a ton of day-to-day involvement in the management of the company, at least not “the board in whole”, although individual board members might. The concept of the board of directors, is they represent the interests of the shareholders of the company. They ultimately have the ability to hire/fire the CEO and to take important votes on various issues of corporate governance.
There are broadly two types of directors–inside, and outside. An inside director is someone with a pretty deep, personal involvement in the company. A typical example would be someone who is say, a retired founder, or a large shareholder in the company, might sit on the board personally. Sometimes the CEO, and other top executive officers are also given board seats (and that makes them very obviously “inside” board members.)
An outside director is someone with no materially significant ties to the company. They don’t work at the company, and are not major shareholders. Neil Armstrong was an outside director at those listed companies.
Now, why would they want Neil Armstrong? Outside directors are often semi-famous or outright very famous public figures (retired congressmen/senators, governors, or even former Presidents), or well known business men/CEOs of other companies or retired businessmen who worked at other companies. So Neil Armstrong obviously kinda fits that profile.
Why do they want people who are total outsiders, who don’t have any real expertise in the business? Mostly because an outside director isn’t expected to be heavily involved in the running of the company. Instead, they’re just supposed to be “independent, trustworthy people.” To main street investors and institutional shareholders, inside directors are “good” because they are deeply knowledgeable about the business, can assist (or are part of) the executive team and etc, but outside directors provide a level of “independence” from the company. The theory is Neil isn’t a former co-worker of the CEO, isn’t best buds with the CFO or etc, so he’s a trustworthy, independent and well known person and thus suitable to function as an outside director.
Note that in the corporate bylaws there is almost never any legal difference between an outside and an inside director. Any elevated powers an inside director has will be based on additional positions they hold with the company (be it an actual executive-level managerial position, special consulting positions etc.) It’s also worth noting that how independent an outside director is varies pretty wildly, and the “broad perception” is most outside directors are selected in part being buddies of the CEO or et cetera which kind of short circuits the independence criteria I mentioned above. Sometimes they are more genuinely independent though, that’s all going to vary wildly from one corporation to the next, based on how powerful the CEO is, if the corporation has a diffuse ownership structure or if one very wealthy/powerful shareholder owns most of the voting shares etc.
Most importantly, an outside director, they generally just attend board meetings and cast votes. That means it’s a very hands off job. An inside director often is very involved day to day, and wouldn’t have time to perform that same role for multiple companies. But an outside director can sit on a half dozen boards and still not come anywhere close to working full time.
During the time Armstrong was on corporate boards, the compensation for an outside director would be “relatively” low. Probably $5-10k/yr, usually with some periodic stock grants, retention bonuses, and also usually a slate of nice “perks” from being on the board. This has changed somewhat in the past 15-20 years, especially with Sarbanes-Oxley. Directors are now held to higher standards, usually have higher workloads, and face higher personal risks due to their board seat. Consequently, pay is a lot higher for directors now than it was in the 1980s or early 90s. But the workload is also higher. There are fewer directors now who fit the old mold of “attend only the quarterly meetings and occasional cast votes”, usually now a director will be on at least one committee–compensation committee, audit committee or etc, and being on those board committees requires more regular meetings and deeper involvement in the company.
Prior to that, some bios were printed, but they were always aimed at children and contained information that could easily have been gleaned from sources like “Time” magazine.