Astronaut’s wife who overcame ridicule to support those with speech disorders
Annie Glenn speech disorder advocate b February 17, 1920 d May 19, 2020
A‘‘I can remember some very painful experiences, especially the ridicule.’’
few days after becoming the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, John Glenn addressed a rapt United States Congress and a reception followed in honour of the astronaut and his family. Three senior politicians approached his wife, Annie, and one asked her a question. As she struggled to shape a response, they turned their backs and walked off.
Annie Glenn, who has died aged 100 from Covid-19, was used to such slights, but it was a sign that her new status as the spouse of a national hero would not eliminate the gauche or ill-mannered behaviour of others when faced with her severe speech impediment. While her
husband soared to fame for a feat that required
travelling an
extraordinary
distance, she became renowned for her advocacy after overcoming an internal challenge: a stammer that was especially problematic given the expectations placed on her by his very public roles as an astronaut and a politician.
Annie Glenn stuttered 85 per cent of the time when trying to speak. Struggling even to say ‘‘hello’’, she was afraid to use the telephone and nervous that if one of her children ever became ill, no-one would understand her call for help.
Shopping, public transport and ordering at restaurants were ordeals. ‘‘I can remember some very painful experiences, especially the ridicule,’’ she told People magazine. ‘‘People would tell me to hurry up or start shouting at me because they thought I was deaf and dumb.’’
Pressure was intense when John became one of the Mercury Seven, the original group of astronauts announced in 1959 by Nasa. The media gravitated towards the handsome couple, who seemed the embodiment of wholesome, devout, Midwestern values.
Her nerves prompted her to turn down a speaking part when the astronauts’ wives were featured on Bob Hope’s television show. In one of the best-known scenes in The Right Stuff (1983), the Hollywood adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book about the Mercury programme, Lyndon Johnson, the vice-president, is waiting outside the couple’s home with a posse of reporters after a postponed launch attempt. Perhaps wary of speaking on camera, Annie does not want to let them in. Though officials demand that John tell her over the phone to open the door, he refuses, backing her to the hilt.
The real Annie was more tenacious than in the film; in any case, to describe her as an astronaut’s wife is not to minimise her accomplishments, but to accentuate them. John’s career imposed significant strains as she raised their children and tried to maintain a semblance of normal family life.
When his orbital mission launched in February 1962 after several delays, Annie was, she said, ‘‘scared to death. I was so afraid that he would never make it back.’’ While she watched on television she was warned that a possible fault with the heat shield meant there was a chance his capsule would burn up during re-entry.
She was less than delighted when John returned to space in 1998, aged 77, on the space shuttle Discovery. Back on Earth, he confirmed it was his final spaceflight. ‘‘She’s been through an awful lot,’’ he told reporters. ‘‘I owe her some consideration at this point in life.’’
Anna Margaret Castor was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Margaret and Homer, a dentist, who had a stutter, though less severe than his daughter’s. Annie and John first met in a playpen. They were childhood friends, then sweethearts, and married in 1943.
Annie played the trombone, organ and piano, and took an undergraduate music degree at nearby Muskingum University but when Pearl Harbour was bombed she got a job as secretary in the US army air corps.
John was devoted to her. ‘‘She was part of my life from my first memory,’’ he wrote in his memoir. She is survived by a daughter, Lyn, an artist, and a son, David, an anaesthesiologist.
Annie had tried speech therapies with little success. Watching television one day in 1973 she saw an interview with the founder of a cutting-edge research and treatment centre in Virginia. She signed up for an intensive threeweek programme. By the end she was able to visit a shopping mall and interact with shop assistants. When she called her husband and spoke in complete sentences, he wept with joy.
Her improved speech boosted her confidence and visibility on the campaign trail. John was elected to the US Senate in 1974 as a Democratic member for Ohio, a position he held for 24 years.
Annie became an adjunct professor of speech-language pathology at The Ohio State University and received a national award in 1983 from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association for ‘‘providing an inspiring model for people with communicative disorders’’. In 1987 the association created the Annie Glenn Award for public champions.
As well as possessing a deep reserve of empathy, she did not lack humour. Arriving home after her life-changing treatment in Virginia, she said with a grin: ‘‘John, I’ve wanted to tell you this for years – pick up your socks.’’ – The Times