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John Glenn, Astronaut & Former U.S. Senator, Dies At 95 by MOSTEC(m): 3:50pm On Dec 09, 2016 |
John Glenn, whose 1962
flight as the first U.S.
astronaut to orbit the Earth
made him an all-American
hero and propelled him to a
long career in the U.S.
Senate, died Thursday. The
last survivor of the original
Mercury 7 astronauts was
95.
Glenn 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.
John Herschel Glenn Jr. had
two major career paths that
often intersected: flying and
politics, and he soared in
both of them.
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Before he gained fame
orbiting the world, he was a
fighter pilot in two wars, and
as a test pilot, he set a
transcontinental speed
record. He later served 24
years in the Senate from
Ohio. A rare setback was a
failed 1984 run for the
Democratic presidential
nomination.
His long political career
enabled him to return to
space in the shuttle
Discovery at age 77 in 1998,
a cosmic victory lap that he
relished and turned into a
teachable moment about
growing old. He holds the
record for the oldest person
in space.
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More than anything, Glenn
was the ultimate and uniquely
American space hero: a
combat veteran with an easy
smile, a strong marriage of
70 years and nerves of
steel. Schools, a space
center and the Columbus
airport were named after him.
So were children.
The Soviet Union leaped
ahead in space exploration
by putting the Sputnik 1
satellite in orbit in 1957, and
then launched the first man
in space, cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin, in a 108-minute
orbital flight on April 12,
1961. After two suborbital
flights by Alan Shepard Jr.
and Gus Grissom, it was up
to Glenn to be the first
American to orbit the Earth.
"Godspeed, John Glenn,"
fellow astronaut Scott
Carpenter radioed just
before Glenn thundered off a
Cape Canaveral launch pad,
now a National Historic
Landmark, to a place America
had never been. At the time
of that Feb. 20, 1962, flight,
Glenn was 40 years old.
With the all-business
phrase, "Roger, the clock is
operating, we're underway,"
Glenn radioed to Earth as he
started his 4 hours, 55
minutes and 23 seconds in
space. Years later, he
explained he said that
because he didn't feel like he
had lifted off and it was the
only way he knew he had
launched.
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During the flight, Glenn
uttered a phrase that he
would repeat frequently
throughout life: "Zero G, and
I feel fine."
"It still seems so vivid to
me," Glenn said in a 2012
interview with The
Associated Press on the 50th
anniversary of the flight. "I
still can sort of pseudo feel
some of those same
sensations I had back in
those days during launch
and all."
Glenn said he was often
asked if he was afraid, and
he replied, "If you are
talking about fear that
overcomes what you are
supposed to do, no. You've
trained very hard for those
flights."
Glenn's ride in the cramped
Friendship 7 capsule had its
scary moments, however.
Sensors showed his heat
shield was loose after three
orbits, and Mission Control
worried he might burn up
during re-entry when
temperatures reached 3,000
degrees. But the heat shield
held.
Even before then, Glenn flew
in dangerous skies. He was a
fighter pilot in World War II
and Korea who flew low, got
his plane riddled with bullets,
flew with baseball great Ted
Williams and earned macho
nicknames during 149 combat
missions. And as a test pilot
he broke aviation records.
The green-eyed, telegenic
Marine even won $25,000 on
the game show "Name That
Tune" with a 10-year-old
partner. And that was before
April 6, 1959, when his life
changed by being selected
as one of the Mercury 7
astronauts and instantly
started attracting more than
his share of the spotlight.
Glenn in later years regaled
crowds with stories of
NASA's testing of would-be
astronauts, from
psychological tests - come
with 20 answers to the
open-ended question "I am"
- to surviving spinning that
pushed 16 times normal
gravity against his body,
popping blood vessels.
But it wasn't nearly as bad
as coming to Cape Canaveral
to see the first unmanned
rocket test.
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"We're watching this thing go
up and up and up ... and all
at once it blew up right over
us, and that was our
introduction to the Atlas,"
Glenn said in 2011. "We
looked at each other and
wanted to have a meeting
with the engineers in the
morning."
In 1959, Glenn wrote in Life
magazine: "Space travel is at
the frontier of my profession.
It is going to be
accomplished, and I want to
be in on it. There is also an
element of simple duty
involved. I am convinced
that I have something to
give this project."
That sense of duty was
instilled at an early age.
Glenn was born July 18,
1921, in Cambridge, Ohio,
and grew up in New Concord,
Ohio, with the nickname
"Bud." He joined the town
band as a trumpeter at age
10 and accompanied his
father one Memorial Day in
an echoing version of
"Taps." In his 1999 memoir,
Glenn wrote "that feeling
sums up my childhood. It
formed my beliefs and my
sense of responsibility.
Everything that came after
that just came naturally."
His love of flight was lifelong;
John Glenn Sr. spoke of the
many summer evenings he
arrived home to find his son
running around the yard with
outstretched arms,
pretending he was piloting a
plane. Last June, at a
ceremony renaming the
Columbus airport for him,
Glenn recalled imploring his
parents to take him to that
airport to look at planes
whenever they passed
through the city: "It was
something I was fascinated
with." He piloted his own
private plane until age 90.
Glenn's goal of becoming a
commercial pilot was changed
by World War II. He left
Muskingum College to join the
Naval Air Corps and soon
after, the Marines.
He became a successful
fighter pilot who ran 59
hazardous missions, often
as a volunteer or as the
requested backup of
assigned pilots. A war later,
in Korea, he earned the
nickname "MiG-Mad
Marine" (or "Old Magnet A
- ," which he sometimes
paraphrased as "Old Magnet
Tail."
"I was the one who went in
low and got them," Glenn
said, explaining that he often
landed with huge holes in the
side of his aircraft because
he didn't like to shoot from
high altitudes.
PHOTOS: Stars We Lost In
2014
Glenn's public life began
when he broke the
transcontinental airspeed
record, bursting from Los
Angeles to New York City in
three hours, 23 minutes and
8 seconds. With his Crusader
averaging 725 mph, the 1957
flight proved the jet could
endure stress when pushed
to maximum speeds over
long distances.
In New York, he got a hero's
welcome - his first tickertape
parade. He got another after
his flight on Friendship 7.
That mission also introduced
Glenn to politics. He
addressed a joint session of
Congress, and dined at the
White House. He became
friends with President
Kennedy and ally and friend
of his brother Robert. The
Kennedys urged him to enter
politics, and after a difficult
few starts he did.
Glenn spent 24 years in the
U.S. Senate, representing
Ohio longer than any other
senator in the state's
history. He announced his
impending retirement in 1997,
35 years to the day after he
became the first American in
orbit, saying, "There is still
no cure for the common
birthday."
Glenn returned to space in a
long-awaited second flight in
1998 aboard the space
shuttle Discovery. He got to
move around aboard the
shuttle for far longer - nine
days compared with just
under five hours in 1962 -
as well as sleep and
experiment with bubbles in
weightlessness.
In a news conference from
space, Glenn said, "To look
out at this kind of creation
out here and not believe in
God is to me impossible."
NASA tailored a series of
geriatric-reaction
experiments to create a
scientific purpose for Glenn's
mission, but there was more
to it than that: a revival of
the excitement of the earliest
days of the space race, a
public relations bonanza and
the gift of a lifetime.
"America owed John Glenn a
second flight," NASA
Administrator Dan Goldin said.
Glenn would later write that
when he mentioned the idea
of going back into space to
his wife, Annie, she
responded: "Over my dead
body."
Glenn and his crewmates flew
3.6 million miles, compared
with 75,000 miles aboard
Friendship 7.
Shortly before he ran for the
1984 Democratic presidential
nomination, a new generation
was introduced to astronaut
Glenn with the film adaptation
of Tom Wolfe's book "The
Right Stuff." He was
portrayed as the ultimate
straight arrow amid a group
of hard-partying astronauts.
Glenn said in 2011: "I don't
think any of us cared for the
movie 'The Right Stuff'; I
know I didn't."
Glenn was unable to
capitalize on the publicity,
though, and his poorly
organized campaign was
short-lived. He dropped out
of the race with his campaign
$2.5 million in the red - a
debt that lingered even after
he retired from the Senate in
1999.
He later joked that except
for going into debt,
humiliating his family and
gaining 16 pounds, running
for president was a good
experience.
Glenn generally steered clear
of campaigns after that,
saying he didn't want to mix
politics with his second space
flight. He sat out the Senate
race to succeed him - he was
hundreds of miles above
Earth on Election Day - and
largely was quiet in the 2000
presidential race.
He first ran for the Senate in
1964 but left the race when
he suffered a concussion
after slipping in the bathroom
and hitting his head on the
tub.
He tried again in 1970 but
was defeated in the primary
by Howard Metzenbaum, who
later lost the general election
to Robert Taft Jr. It was the
start of a complex
relationship with
Metzenbaum, whom he later
joined in the Senate.
For the next four years,
Glenn devoted his attention
to business and investments
that made him a
multimillionaire. He had joined
the board of Royal Crown
Cola after the aborted 1964
campaign and was president
of Royal Crown International
from 1967 to 1969. In the
early 1970s, he remained
with Royal Crown and
invested in a chain of Holiday
Inns.
In 1974, Glenn ran against
Metzenbaum in what turned
into a bitter primary and won
the election. He eventually
made peace with
Metzenbaum, who won
election to the Senate in
1976.
Glenn set a record in 1980
by winning re-election with a
1.6 million vote margin.
He became an expert on
nuclear weaponry and was
the Senate's most dogged
advocate of nonproliferation.
He was the leading supporter
of the B-1 bomber when
many in Congress doubted
the need for it. As chairman
of the Governmental Affairs
Committee, he turned a
microscope on waste and
fraud in the federal
bureaucracy.
Glenn said the lowest point of
his life was 1990, when he
and four other senators
came under scrutiny for their
connections to Charles
Keating, the notorious
financier who eventually
served prison time for his
role in the costly savings
and loan failure of the 1980s.
The Senate Ethics Committee
cleared Glenn of serious
wrongdoing but said he
"exercised poor judgment."
The episode was the only
brush with scandal in his
long public career and didn't
diminish his popularity in
Ohio.
Glenn joked that the only
astronaut he was envious of
was his fellow Ohioan: Neil
Armstrong, the first man to
walk on the moon.
"I've been very fortunate to
have a lot of great
experiences in my life and
I'm thankful for them," he
said in 2012.
In 1943, Glenn married his
childhood sweetheart, Anna
Margaret Castor. They met
when they were toddlers,
and when she had mumps as
a teenager, he came to her
house, cut a hole in her
bedroom window screen, and
passed her a radio to keep
her company, a friend
recounted.
"I don't remember the first
time I told Annie I loved her,
or the first time she told me,"
Glenn would write in his
memoir. "It was just
something we both knew." He
bought her a diamond
engagement ring in 1942 for
$125. It's never been
replaced.
They had two children,
Carolyn and John David.
He and his wife, Annie, split
their later years between
Washington and Columbus.
Both served as trustees at
their alma mater, Muskingum
College. Glenn spent time
promoting the John Glenn
School of Public Affairs at
Ohio State University, which
also houses an archive of
his private papers and
photographs.
|
Re: John Glenn, Astronaut & Former U.S. Senator, Dies At 95 by HQuadreal: 3:51pm On Dec 09, 2016 |
Wow Rip. |
Re: John Glenn, Astronaut & Former U.S. Senator, Dies At 95 by Flakosixfive(m): 8:01am On Dec 10, 2016 |
oh no..my hero dies.. Fun fact: He's a year younger than his wife. she was born 1920, he 1921 and she's still alive. They were married since the 1940s. He's also the last remaining of the Mercury seven program. 1 Like |
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