Hundreds show up for estate sale at John Glenn’s house
POTOMAC, Maryland — Long after the obituaries, the tributes and the solemn ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, there was this: a modest Cape Cod house in a D.C. suburb and an estate sale to dispose of the things that John Glenn left behind.
Glenn died in December 2016, but the news that his home and all of its contents were on sale still drew crowds. By 11:30 a.m. Friday — the second day of an estate sale scheduled to go through Sunday — more than 130 people stood in line, waiting in mid–30degree weather for a chance to buy something that once belonged to the first American to orbit Earth.
It was a cold but cheerful group: Nearly every time a customer emerged, the line burst into cheers and applause. A man who walked out carrying a lamp made of a rifle was greeted with particular enthusiasm. A woman who walked out toting Glenn’s old leaf-blower drew good–natured ribbing. “I’ve got John Glenn’s blower; I’m going to use it to go to outer space,” one man crowed.
Nina Harris of Glenn Dale, Maryland, emerged from the house carrying a pot de creme set and a multicolor shawl once owned by Annie Glenn.
Harris drove nearly an hour to get to the sale, but did so, in a way, to pay her respects.
Both she and her father worked for NASA. Her father worked on Glenn’s 1962 orbital mission. Her father, she said, has pictures with Glenn at the launch site at Cape Canaveral.
She, meanwhile, worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for 30 years. When Glenn went back to space at age 77, she got his autograph.
When she heard about the sale on the news, she had to go. Being in the Glenns’ old home, she said, “was magical. Warm. You could tell it was just a warm, loving house just from the things they collected, and the furnishings are warm and friendly. You would like to sit in his big easy chair. It was lovely.”
Inside, crowds rifled through books — Glenn appeared to have an affinity for historical fiction — and glassware. A special room for Glennrelated memorabilia necessitated another long line, with five people permitted in at a time. Upstairs, a box held dozens of white gloves that Annie Glenn no doubt wore first as an astronaut’s wife, then a senator’s wife.
Outside, in the garage, not far from antiquated snow skis, a table full of Christmas tchotchkes and a relatively unused–looking saw, a children’s school desk sat off to the side, unpriced. Carved in it were the words “Mansfield,” “Newark” and, in the lower left corner, “John” and “Annie.”
John and Annie Glenn were childhood friends who became high school sweethearts and then married, their lives taking them to Florida, Washington, D.C., and, in John Glenn’s case, to outer space. Annie turned 98 in February. As of Friday, her former kitchen remained packed with the recipe books and kitchen tools that make up a lifetime of meals.
On Friday, Kailyn and Daniel Van Schooten walked out of the Glenns’ old home carrying a set of napkins, two champagne glasses that they bought for $3 each and a sign that says “No Sniveling.”
The couple has been married a year. They’re still furnishing their small apartment in Takoma Park, Maryland, and the champagne glasses will come in handy, they said. But when they saw the “No Sniveling” sign, though, they decided to buy it without knowing the price.
“I walked up to the checkout and said, ‘So I found this in the garage,’” Daniel said, saying he expected the cashier to look at it and say, “This is amazing! $50.”
The cashier looked at the sign. “She said, ‘I love it! That’s amazing,’” he said. “And then she thought about it and said, ‘How about $5?’
“I said, ‘That sounds like a deal. I’ll take it.”
“Twenty years from now when we have kids who are teenagers, that’s going to be hanging there,” Kailyn said.
“Our entire life it’s going to be, ‘John Glenn says …’” Daniel said, gesturing toward the sign.