It’s just possible that John Glenn was the first public figure I know to be called a hero. I was nine years old when he became the first American astronaut in 1962 to orbit the earth. We listened to the feat via radio in my third grade classroom. And later we celebrated his achievement with a yoyo trick – spinning the orb sharply and then looping it three times and bringing it back up to your hand. We kids always had trouble with the landing.
Landing was not something that troubled the real John Glenn. As a Marine pilot he flew 149 combat missions in World War II and Korea and then became a test pilot. He was selected as one of the Mercury 7, America’s first astronauts. As we know from Tom Wolfe’s splendid book, The Right Stuff (and subsequent film), Glenn was the “Dudley-do-right-type” character, a bit older than his fellow astronauts and quite a bit more straight -aced. His love aside from flying was his childhood sweetheart, Annie.
With this handsome good looks and boyish charm, Glenn fit the hero iconography well. That was not something he aspired to. “I don’t think of myself that way,” he told the New York Times when he was 90. “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.”
While aeronautics suited him well, politics was not; he ran three times for the Senate from his home state of Ohio before he won. And then he served four terms. Bob Shrum, a long time Democratic operative who ran his final campaign, said on CNN that Glenn was not a natural politician, he was a “natural public servant.”
Service was paramount to men like Glenn. And from his example, we can learn what it takes to put yourself at risk for a cause. First in combat. Later in space. He also took that sense of service to the U.S. Senate. There applied himself to mastering the issues of the day and later championing the rights of the elderly. To prove that final point he went into space aboard the Space Shuttle, becoming at age 77 the oldest person ever to do so.
There was something old fashioned about Glenn rooted no doubt in his rural Ohio upbringing. While he cut a bold figure he was a down-to-earth man. People recall his common touch. His basic human decency. He spoke well of others ignoring his own accomplishments. He was a patriot not because of his feats in space but his example of national service.
On a personal note, I once met Glenn’s wife, Annie. She was visiting a nursing home in North Central Ohio where I was working as summertime newspaper photographer in 1974. Mrs. Glenn was warm and gracious, as befits the spouse of a politician. What I didn’t know then was that Annie had only recently learned to speak fluently, overcoming a lifetime speech disability. The two were inseparable.
Friends and family will mourn his loss but the rest of the nation can join in because we have lost a man who put service to family and the nation first. And for that he will be well remembered.
God speed, John Glenn.
