John Glenn

He was a toddler in New Concord, Ohio, when he met Anna Castor, and neither of them could ever recall a time before the other. His father had come home from the Western Front and started the Glenn Plumbing Company. The boy washed cars and sold rhubarb until he had a bicycle, then delivered the Columbus Dispatch, played center and linebacker at the high school, and went up to Muskingum College to study chemistry. In 1941 the Civilian Pilot Training Program handed him a license and a physics credit for nothing, and when the country entered the war he quit school to enlist. He never did the senior year in residence or sit the proficiency exam. Muskingum gave him the degree in 1962, after the flight.

He flew 57 combat missions in the Marshall Islands and 90 more over Korea, shooting down three MiG-15s in the last ten days of that war, part of the time alongside Ted Williams, who called him absolutely fearless and the best he ever saw. On July 16, 1957, he took an F8U Crusader from Los Alamitos to New York in three hours, 23 minutes and 8.3 seconds, the first supersonic flight across the country. NASA picked him for the Mercury Seven on April 9, 1959. On February 20, 1962, Friendship 7 carried him around the Earth three times in four hours and 55 minutes while a faulty sensor told the ground his heat shield had come loose. He collected six Distinguished Flying Crosses and 18 Air Medals, and then spent 24 years in the Senate.

The flight was the end of his flying. NASA's administrator later said plainly that the Kennedy White House found him too valuable as a symbol to risk again, so he resigned in January 1964 and ran for the Senate instead. In late February he slipped in a hotel bathroom trying to straighten a mirror, struck the tub, and came away with a concussion and an inner-ear injury that made campaigning impossible. He withdrew on March 30. Ten years of Royal Crown Cola and Holiday Inns went by before Ohio finally sent him to Washington. A presidential run in 1984 finished fifth in Iowa and left three million dollars of debt he carried for more than 20 years, and the Keating Five inquiry found he had shown poor judgment in taking 200,000 dollars from Charles Keating.

He was the last of the Mercury Seven left alive. In early December 2016 he went into the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, and he died there on the 8th at 95. No cause was announced. His body lay in state at the Ohio Statehouse, Scott Carpenter's old launch-pad benediction came back as a hashtag, and on April 6, 2017 he was buried at Arlington — the same date on which he and Annie had married in a New Concord church 74 years earlier. She outlived him by three and a half years and died of COVID-19 in May 2020, at 100, having spent the second half of her life teaching other people with severe stutters how to speak.

John Glenn's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Project Bullet mission
  First supersonic transcontinental flight, in three hours 23 minutes 8.3 seconds 1957
• Friendship 7 (Mercury-Atlas 6) mission
  Three orbits, and the first American to circle the Earth 1962
• Mercury capsule cockpit layout invention
  His assigned specialty among the seven was instrument panel and control design 1960
• John Glenn College of Public Affairs company
  Founded at Ohio State and now carrying his name 1998
• STS-95 mission
  Nine days on Discovery at 77, the oldest person to reach orbit 1998
• John Glenn: A Memoir book
  Written with Nick Taylor 1999

• 1941 aged ~20 Earns a pilot's licence through the Civilian Pilot Training Program He quit Muskingum to enlist when the United States entered the war.
• April 6, 1943 aged 21 Marries Annie Castor at the College Drive Church in New Concord
• July 22, 1953 aged 32 Shoots down his third MiG-15 in ten days The Korean armistice was signed five days later.
• July 16, 1957 aged 35 Flies the first supersonic transcontinental mission
• February 20, 1962 aged 40 Orbits the Earth three times aboard Friendship 7 A sensor wrongly indicated a loose heat shield during the flight.
• March 30, 1964 aged 42 Withdraws from his first Senate race after a bathroom fall A concussion and inner-ear damage had left him unable to campaign.
• November 1974 aged 53 Elected to the United States Senate from Ohio He served 24 years, chairing Governmental Affairs from 1987 to 1995.
• October 29, 1998 aged 77 Launches on STS-95 at the age of 77 The only person to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programs.
• December 8, 2016 aged 95 Dies in Columbus, the last surviving Mercury astronaut

• Katherine Johnson 1918–2020
  NASA mathematician whose orbital trajectory calculations supported the Mercury and Apollo crewed flights. checked the trajectory numbers by hand
• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. would not risk him a second time
• Tom Wolfe 1930–2018
  New Journalism pioneer whose The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities chronicled American culture. wrote the book that fixed the Mercury story
• Wernher von Braun 1912–1977
  German-American aerospace engineer who led the development of the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon. built the rockets he rode
• Sally Ride 1951–2012
  First American woman in space and physicist who flew on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. later generation of American firsts in orbit