Today is John Glenn’s 90th birthday. Yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a nice article about him in the Crossroads section (Don’t ask me why there; I just read the paper).
He was a hero in two of America’s wars, then a fabled test pilot, a four-term senator, a presidential candidate, finally a party elder. But in mind’s eye and in history, John Herschel Glenn Jr. is frozen in time.
I was a lad when Glenn went up in Friendship 7, the third flight of the Mercury program, the first one that actually orbited the earth.
Sometime after I came into possession of a 33 1/3 rpm recording of the highlights of the flight. Sadly, it’s long gone.
Space captured my attention, as it did many, during those early years. I would watch the liftoffs on TV, I tried to take pictures of the moon landing, I continued to follow the space program down through the years.
I haven’t agreed with all of the issues in his political life, but he was and is an American hero; maybe one of the last we’ve had.
God speed, John Glenn.
