Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Unabashed patriot’s life of greatness
Former Ohio senator had the right stuff to go up again at 77
John Glenn, a Marine fighter pilot, senator and the first astronaut to orbit Earth, died Thursday at the age of 95. Glenn, whose historic 1962 flight made him an all-American hero and propelled him into a 24-year career as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Ohio, was the last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.
“Glenn’s extraordinary courage, intellect, patriotism and humanity were the hallmarks of a life of greatness. His missions have helped make possible everything our space program has since achieved and ... that we are striving toward now.”
— NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
“On top of paving the way for the rest of us, he was also a first-class gentleman and an unabashed patriot.”
— U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who also flew in space
“Sen. Glenn proved that with unwavering determination and relentless hard work, every person can create his or her own opportunity to fulfill a potential beyond the limits of this earth.”
— Elaine Roberts, head of John Glenn Columbus International Airport
LOS ANGELES — John Glenn, who became a hero as the first American to orbit the Earth and then relived that glory 36 years later as the oldest man to go into space, died Thursday. He was 95.
Glenn, who also served for 24 years as a U.S. senator from Ohio, died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.
In his first historic flight, Glenn circled the Earth in a tiny spaceship on Feb. 20, 1962. To return to space on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1998, he sold himself as a human guinea pig who — at 77 — would demonstrate the effects of space travel on the elderly.
The second celebrated trip did nearly as much to revive interest in America’s space program as his first pioneering voyage had to ignite the country’s fascination in space exploration.
Glenn first earned broad public attention in 1962 in the bell-shaped space capsule Friendship 7 — a flight that NASA’s mission control worried might burn up upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Epitomizing the fighterjock pilot of few words mythologized in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff,” Glenn exited the capsule smiling and jauntily walked across the awaiting aircraft carrier deck as if he had just returned from an errand.
Glenn was the last surviving astronaut of the original Mercury 7 group. The others were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard Jr. and Deke Slayton.
A war hero and test pilot who earned fame even before he was named to the Mercury team, Glenn seemed to have the right stuff and more.
Not only did Glenn “have courage and ambition, but he also had supreme confidence in himself and his own abilities,” qualities that distinguished him from most mortals, said Frank Van Riper, who wrote the 1983 biography “Glenn: The Astronaut Who Would be President.”
After his first space flight, Glenn, then 40, was elevated to celebrity status as much by his personal charm and heroics as he was by the pioneering era that he helped define.
Before Glenn made his three loops around Earth in a four-hour, 56-minute flight, only Soviet cosmonauts, test dummies and dogs had made historic “firsts” in space.
Almost a year before Glenn’s flight, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space.
Glenn was neither the first or second American in space. Those distinctions belonged to Shepard, whose voyage lasted 15 minutes and who was followed months later by Grissom. Yet Glenn’s flight raised the most passion and publicity in America. Glenn stayed aloft for hours, focusing Americans’ rapt attention on his every orbit and ultimately restoring America’s confidence in its technological prowess.
President John F. Kennedy was apparently so concerned about the astronaut’s well-being that he vetoed a return to space by Glenn. Rather, Kennedy marked Glenn as an American with a political future. After a few early political defeats, the astronaut was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 1974.
Although Glenn remained a supporter of NASA, he tried to steer clear of being seen as the Senate “astronaut,” preferring to make his mark in other areas. He was perhaps best known as the author of bills to restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.
Yet his drive to return to space never fully abated, and he relentlessly lobbied NASA for another space flight. Glenn insisted that he was not driven to return to space for the thrill but as a scientist-explorer.
After his late-in-life flight, dozens of tests done on his body showed that he handled the rigors of space as well as astronauts roughly half his age, NASA scientists said when results were released in 2000.
In 2012, Glenn and Carpenter received a hero’s welcome when they returned to the Cape Canaveral launch pad to mark the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s orbital flight.
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. His mother, Clara, a teacher, and father, John, soon moved to the town of New Concord, where his father opened a plumbing business. At 3, he met Anna “Annie” Castor, the 4-year-old daughter of the town dentist. The pair started dating in high school and married in 1944.
A religious man, Glenn enrolled in Muskingum College, a small Presbyterian school in New Concord, where he sang in the church choir and played football. While there, Glenn learned to fly through a civilian program run by the Navy.
When it came time to enlist, he joined the Marines, leaving college behind after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
During World War II, he rose to the rank of captain and decided to make a career in the military. By the end of the war, he had flown 59 missions and was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses and 10 Air Medals.
The Korean War meant 90 more missions and many more medals, including a third and fourth Distinguished Flying Cross.
As a test pilot, Glenn pushed his bosses to let him attempt a transcontinental flight in an F8U-1 Crusader fighter aircraft. On July 16, 1957, he set a speed record of 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8.4 seconds flying from Los Angeles to New York, picking up a fifth Distinguished Flying Cross and a taste for fame.
When Glenn took his turn in space, astronaut Carpenter spoke for all Americans when he radioed from launch control, “Godspeed, John Glenn.”
Glenn, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, is survived by his wife, Annie; two children, David and Carolyn Ann; and two grandchildren.