AMERICA’S SPACE AGE HERO
The first American to orbit Earth went on to become a national figure in politics
John Glenn, a frecklefaced son of Ohio who was hailed as a national hero and a symbol of the Space Age as the first American to orbit the Earth, then became a national political figure for 24 years in the Senate, died on Thursday in Columbus, Ohio. He was 95. His death was announced on Twitter by Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
Glenn recently had been hospitalized at the James Cancer Center at Ohio State University in Columbus, though university officials said at the time that admission there did not necessarily mean he had cancer. He had heart-valve replacement surgery in 2014 and a stroke around that time.
In just five hours on Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn joined a select roster of Americans whose feats have seized the country’s imagination and come to embody a moment in its history, figures like Lewis and Clark, the Wright brothers and Charles Lindbergh.
It was an anxious nation that watched and listened that February morning, as Glenn, then 40, a Marine Corps test pilot and one of the seven original American astronauts, climbed
into Friendship 7, the tiny Mercury capsule atop an Atlas rocket rising from the concrete flats of Cape Canaveral in Florida.
It was a short flight, just three orbits. But when Glenn was safely back, flashing the world a triumphant grin, doubts were replaced by a broad, new faith that the United States could indeed hold its own against the Soviet Union in the Cold War and might someday prevail.
Glenn was reluctant to talk about himself as a hero.
“I figure I’m the same person who grew up in New Concord, Ohio, and went off through the years to participate in a lot of events of importance,” he said in an interview years later.
Glenn did not return to space for a long time. President John F. Kennedy thought him too valuable as a hero to risk losing in an accident. So Glenn resigned from the astronaut corps in 1964, became an executive in private industry and entered politics, serving four full terms as a Democratic senator from Ohio and in 1984 running unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Finally, 36 years after his Mercury flight, in the last months of his final Senate term, he got his wish for a return to orbit. Despite some criticism that his presence on the mission was a political payoff, a waste of money and of doubtful scientific merit, the hero of yesteryear brought out the crowds again, cheering out of nostalgia and enduring respect as he was launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 29, 1998. At 77, he became the oldest person to go into space.
‘For the country’
In retirement from the Senate, Glenn lived with his wife of 73 years, Anna (he always called her Annie), in a suburb of Washington in addition to Columbus. Ohio State University is the repository of papers from his space and political careers.
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, the only son of a railroad conductor who also owned a plumbing business, and the former Clara Sproat. A few years later, the Glenns moved to New Concord, a small town in southeastern Ohio with a population of little more than 1,000.
“It was small but had a lot of patriotic feeling and parades on all the national holidays,” Glenn once said. “Wanting to do something for the country was just natural, growing up in a place like New Concord.”
Glenn began his journey to fame in World War II. In 1939, he enrolled at Muskingum College in his hometown to study chemistry, but he took flying lessons on the side.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he signed up for the Naval Aviation cadet program and after pilot training opted to join the Marines. As a fighter pilot, he flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific, earning two Distinguished Flying Crosses and other decorations. Glenn saw more action in the Korean War, flying 90 combat missions and winning more medals.
Then, in 1959, newly promoted to lieutenant colonel, he heeded a call for test pilots to apply to be astronauts for the fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He and six other pilots were selected in April of that year.
The 1962 space mission came after two months of one postponement after another, sometimes for mechanical problems, often for bad weather. Once Glenn had to wait six hours, fully suited, in the cramped Friendship 7 capsule before officials called off the launch. But he projected confidence.
“You fear the least what you know the most about,” he said at the time.
First orbit scare
At the end of the first orbit, an automatic control mechanism failed, and Glenn took over manual control. He would see three sunsets in a brief time. He puzzled for a while about “fireflies” outside his window. NASA later determined that it was his urine and sweat, which was being dumped overboard and turned to frozen crystals glowing in sunlight.
A faulty warning light signaled that the capsule heat shield, designed to protect it in the fiery descent back to Earth, had come loose and might come off during re-entry. The signal was erroneous, but no one could be sure. Ground controllers ordered that a retrorocket unit attached under the heat shield by metal straps not be jettisoned after firing in order to give added protection and reduce the risk of premature detachment of the heat shield.
In the flush of fame, Glenn toured the country publicizing the space program, visiting aerospace plants and waving to cheering crowds and signing autographs. But he always had his eye on another flight into space.
One night in December 1962, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited the Glenns to dinner at his home in McLean, Va. In the course of the evening, the attorney general suggested that Glenn run for public office. With the backing of a powerful Kennedy, he might have a good chance at a Senate seat from Ohio in the 1964 election.
Glenn eventually took the advice but had to quit the race after being seriously injured in a bathroom fall. He spent the next decade working as an executive of the Royal Crown Cola Co.
In 1970, Glenn ran again for the Senate but lost in
the Democratic primary to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, Glenn won the primary and breezed to victory in the general election, beginning a 24-year career in the Senate.
Back in space in ’98
Over the years, Glenn earned the respect of Senate colleagues as an upright, candid and diligent legislator. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., described Glenn as a “workhorse” who was especially wellinformed and a forceful voice on defense issues.
As a senator, Glenn developed an expertise in weapons systems, nuclear proliferation issues and most legislation related to technology and bureaucratic reform. He generally took moderate positions on most issues, though in his last two terms his voting record became more liberal. He was an enthusiastic supporter of President Bill Clinton.
The senator drew admiring audiences in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, but his wooden speaking style and lack of a cogent campaign message were blamed for his poor showing at the polls.
The one blemish on Glenn’s squeaky-clean political reputation came in the 1980s, when he was one of five senators present at a meeting with federal regulators concerning accusations of savings and loan association fraud against Charles H. Keating Jr., a former Ohioan.
The meeting smacked of impropriety and political pressure. Because Glenn had no further contact with Keating, who eventually was sent to prison, the Senate decided that he did nothing deserving discipline.
As a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Glenn developed the medical rationale used in arguing his case for a return flight in space.
He offered himself as a human guinea pig in tests of the physiological effects of space weightlessness, like bone-mass loss and cardiovascular, muscular and immune system changes, and how they seem to be comparable to the usual effects of aging.
In 1998, still healthy and vigorous, though not as agile as in 1962, Glenn embarked on his second venture in space, as he said in an interview, to show the world that the lives of older people need not be dictated by the calendar.
A lifetime of honors
In recent years, honors continued to come his way: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland was renamed the John H. Glenn Research Center.
Glenn is survived by his wife; two children, Carolyn Ann Glenn of St. Paul, Minn. and John David Glenn of Berkeley, Calif.; and two grandsons, Daniel and Zach Glenn.
Glenn was a flier, almost to the end.
In one of the interviews at this time, he was reminded that Tom Wolfe, the author, had recently judged him “the last true national hero America has ever had.”
Glenn gave another of his dismissive aw-shucks responses: “I don’t think of myself that way,” he said.
“I get up each day and have the same problems others have at my age. As for as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.”