Retiring to Space
A Renaissance man aims to retire with a flourish

In this story:

• A history of heroism
  
• 'Just a normal day in space'
  
• From rocketman to congressman
  
• 'Another adventure into the unknown'
  

	Weeks before blast-off, Glenn had already achieved hero status, appearing on the cover of LIFE Magazine for the third time.

The skin of Glenn's capsule had caught fire from the friction of its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and being retrieved. Glenn's first words as he stepped to the deck, "Boy, that was a real fireball of a ride!"

Four million people turned out to honor him at the largest ticker-tape parade New York City had ever thrown. President John F. Kennedy valued Glenn so highly as a symbol of U.S. prowess during the space race with the Soviets that he ordered NASA not to let him return to space.

But even before his historic flight, Glenn had shown that he had the talent, the discipline and the courage that collectively came to be known as "the right stuff."

Glenn flew 59 combat missions during World War II as a Marine pilot, and another 90 missions during the Korean War. In the last nine days, alone, of his Korean service, Glenn downed three MiGs along the Yalu River.

A L S O:

The Flight of Friendship 7, February 20, 1962 The Launch (2.8M/42 sec. QuickTime) The Landing (2.1M/31 sec. QuickTime)

Additional Friendship 7 footage from NASA Netshow, 6 min. 45 sec 28K 56K Note: Clips are video-only

During the post-war years, Glenn worked as a test pilot on Navy and Marine Corps jet fighters and attack aircraft, and set a transcontinental speed record in 1957 aboard an F8U Crusader. It was the first flight from Los Angeles to New York to average supersonic speeds.

In 1996, at the age of 75, Glenn set another speed record by flying his Beechcraft Baron from Dayton, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., in 96 minutes.

Indeed, simply being selected as one of the U.S. space program's first seven astronauts in the Mercury program -- and the oldest one, at that -- put Glenn at the peak of an extremely competitive and life-threatening profession.

As fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter said before Glenn was chosen for his historic Mercury flight: "If I don't go first, I'll have had enough honor just being one of this group."

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, to a plumber and his wife who moved to New Concord, Ohio, when their son was 2.

He attended public schools in New Concord where he met Anna ("Annie") Margaret Castor, the girl he would later marry. Glenn attended Muskingum College, which is also in New Concord, and enlisted in the Naval Aviation Cadet Program shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

He was commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1943, the same year he and Annie were married. They have a son, Dave, and a daughter, Lyn.

Glenn's heroics during World War II and the Korean War -- his aircraft were hit by enemy fire 11 times -- won him six Distinguished Flying Crosses along with numerous other medals and commendations.

He then trained at the Navy's prestigious test pilot school at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, and was assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics before he was chosen for the Mercury program.

Three years later, on February 20, 1962, Glenn made his four-hour, 55-minute, 23-second flight in the cramped Friendship 7 capsule. He lapped the planet three times at a height of 162 miles before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.

	As Glenn's Atlas rocket lifted from the pad, a crowd stood squinting on the beach to get a glimpse of the rocket as it took off in a fiery blaze from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Glenn later recalled for Life magazine a magical scene that took place during one of his orbits: "There, spread out as far as I could see were literally thousands of tiny luminous objects that glowed in the black sky like fireflies.

"I was riding slowly through them, and the sensation was like walking backwards through a pasture where someone had waved a wand and made all the fireflies stop right where they were and glow steadily."

After his flight, Glenn was debriefed on Grand Turk Island by doctors and NASA personnel, including a psychiatrist who asked him to fill out a standard form on which the last question was: "Was there any unusual activity during this period?"

"No," Glenn wrote, "just a normal day in space."

Glenn was awarded the Space Congressional Medal of Honor for his feat, but was frustrated in his attempts to return to space and finally went into business.

He became friendly with the Kennedy family and was traveling with Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign when Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. Kennedy's wife, Ethel, asked Glenn to return to Virginia with her five youngest children, and it was Glenn who told them later that their father had died.

"That's one of the hardest things I ever did in my life," he says.

In 1964, the year he left the space program, Glenn turned to politics himself. But it was no smooth launch. An injury forced him to withdraw from the 1964 Ohio race for the U.S. Senate and, in 1970, he lost the Ohio Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum.

Four years later, Glenn tried again, this time beating Metzenbaum in the primary and easily winning the Senate seat. He was re-elected in 1980, 1986 and 1992, becoming Ohio's first four-term senator. In 1984, he mounted an ill-fated presidential campaign that put him $3 million in debt.

	Glenn is depicted as Uncle Sam in this 1984 presidential campaign sign in Miami. The entire sign reads, "I need you in 84 John Glenn"

If Glenn has not been the hero in Washington that he was in the air and in space, it may be because he has championed such bland issues as education and bureaucratic reform. He also acquired a reputation as a dry speaker, a reputation furthered by his address to the 1976 Democratic Convention.

His reputation also suffered when he was identified as one of five lawmakers suspected of doing favors for Charles Keating. The wealthy savings and loan executive and campaign donor was convicted of fraud and racketeering in the most expensive savings and loan failure in U.S. history.

Glenn was ultimately found to have done nothing worse than exercise bad judgment, although his public image suffered somewhat.

Glenn is the ranking Democrat on the Governmental Affairs Committee, which investigated the campaign fund-raising abuses in the 1996 elections. There has been speculation that his return to space was his reward from President Clinton for what some felt was his foot-dragging during those hearings.

Asked about the alleged conflict at the January 16 news conference announcing his participation in the Discovery mission, Glenn said, "Nothing could be further from the truth. I have to this day not discussed the campaign finance hearings with the president, the vice president or anyone at the White House."

A L S O:

"NASA news conference announcing plans to send Glenn on the shuttle. Includes Q & A session and Glenn's response to charges of political favoritism. (January 16, 1998)

Netshow (1 hour, 4 min.) 28K 56K

Despite his age, NASA and other scientists say Glenn is fit and perfectly capable of spending nearly nine days in space. And they say there are valid scientific reasons for making him, at 77, the oldest person ever to go into space.

With 149 military sorties, two speed records and one orbital flight under his belt, Glenn explains, "I see this as another adventure into the unknown."