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John H. Glenn, Jr.
United States Senator from Ohio
In office December 24, 1974–January 6, 1999
Preceded by	Howard Metzenbaum
Succeeded by	George Voinovich
Personal details
Nationality	american
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Anna Margaret Castor

John Herschel Glenn Jr. (born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio) is an American astronaut, Marine Corps fighter pilot, ordained Presbyterian elder, corporate executive, and politician. He was the third American to fly in space and the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Friendship 7. He is the oldest person to have entered orbit, having flown into space in 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-95 at age 77. He also served as a United States Senator (D-Ohio) (1974 – 1999), and received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Early history and military career

Glenn grew up in Cambridge, Ohio and New Concord, Ohio and earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Muskingum College.

He enrolled in the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in 1942 and earned a commission in the United States Marine Corps in 1943. During World War II he was assigned to VMF-155 as an F4U Corsair pilot and flew in 59 combat missions. He saw action over the Marshall Islands, specifically Maloelap, where he attacked anti-aircraft gunnery and dropped bombs. In 1945, Glenn was transferred to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland where he was promoted to captain by the war's end.

Following the war, as a member of VMF-218, Glenn flew patrol missions in North China, until his unit was moved to Guam. In 1948 he became a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. Following that he attended amphibious warfare school and was given a staff assignment, all the while seeking transfer to combat in Korea.

Glenn was finally assigned to VMF-311 flying the F9F Panther and eventually took part in 63 combat missions with the Marines during the Korean War. It was during this time that Glenn earned the nickname "magneic *** ", for his ability to attract flak. On two occasions he brought his jet back to base with over 250 holes in it. During his time in Korea, Glenn also served for a time alongside Ted Williams, a future hall of fame baseball player for the Boston Red Sox. On his second tour he flew with the United States Air Force on an interservice exchange. Flying 27 missions in the F-86 Sabre, he shot down three MiG-15s near the Yalu River in the last nine days of the war.

He returned to NAS Pax River, with an appointment to the Test Pilot School (class 12). As a test pilot, he served as armament officer, flying planes to high altitudes and testing their cannon/machine guns. On July 16, 1957, Glenn completed the first supersonic transcontinental flight in a Vought F8U Crusader. The California to New York flight took 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. As Glenn passed over his hometown, a child in the neighborhood reportedly ran to the Glenn house shouting "Johnny dropped a bomb! Johnny dropped a bomb! Johnny dropped a bomb!" as the sonic boom shook the town.

NASA

John Herschel Glenn Jr.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Test pilot
Space career
NASA Astronaut
Rank	Colonel, USMC
Time in space	9d 02h 39 m
Selection	1959 NASA Group
Missions	Mercury-Atlas 6, STS-95
Mission insignia	File:STS-95 patch.jpg

In April 1959, Glenn was assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as one of the original group of Mercury astronauts for the Mercury Project. During this time, he remained an officer in the Marine Corps. He piloted the first American manned orbital mission aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, on the "Mercury Atlas 6" mission, lasting 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. During the mission there was concern that his heat shield had failed and that his craft would burn up on re-entry but he landed safely. Glenn was celebrated as a national hero, and received a ticker-tape parade reminiscent of Lindbergh. His fame and political gifts were noted by the Kennedys, and he became a personal friend of the Kennedy family; after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy asked Glenn to give the news to the Kennedy children on the day of November 22, 1963.

Glenn resigned from NASA six weeks after the Kennedy assassination to run for office in his home state of Ohio. In 1965, Glenn retired as a Colonel from the USMC and entered the business world as an executive for Royal Crown Cola. He reentered the world of politics later on. Some accounts of Glenn's years at NASA suggest that Glenn was prevented from flying in Gemini or Apollo missions, either by President John F. Kennedy, himself, or by NASA management, on the grounds that the subsequent loss of a national hero of such stature would seriously harm or even end the manned space program. Yet Glenn resigned from the astronaut corps on January 30, 1964, well before even the first Gemini crew was assigned.

Glenn lifted off for a second space flight on October 29, 1998, on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 in order to study the effects of space flight on the elderly. At age 77, Glenn became the oldest person ever to go into space. Glenn's participation in the nine-day mission was criticized by some in the space community as a junket for a politician. Others noted that Glenn's flight offered valuable research on weightlessness and other aspects of space flight on the same person at two points in life thirty-five years apart — by far the longest interval between space flights by the same person. Upon the safe return of the STS-95 crew, Glenn (and his crewmates) received another ticker-tape parade, making him the ninth (and, as of 2006, final) person to have ever received multiple ticker-tape parades in his lifetime (as opposed to that of a sports team).

In an ironic twist, Glenn vehemently opposed the sending of Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, to the International Space Station on the grounds that Tito's trip served no scientific purpose.

The NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio is named after him. Colonel Glenn Highway, which runs by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University near Dayton, Ohio, is also named after him.

Life in politics

In 1964, John Glenn announced that he was resigning from the space program to run against incumbent Senator Stephen M. Young in the Democratic primary, but he was forced to withdraw when he hit his head on a bathtub. He sustained a concussion and injured his inner ear. Recovery left him unable to campaign at that time.

Glenn remained close to the Kennedy family and was with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated.

In 1970, Glenn contested for the Democratic nomination for U. S. Senate; Glenn was defeated in the primary by fellow Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, who went on to lose the general election race to Robert Taft Jr. In the bitterly-fought 1974 Democratic primary rematch, Glenn defeated Metzenbaum, who had earlier been appointed by Ohio governor John J. Gilligan to fill out the Senate term of William B. Saxbe, who had resigned to become U. S. attorney general. Metzenbaum was running to retain the seat to which he had been appointed. In the 1974 general election, Glenn defeated Republican Mayor of Cleveland Ralph Perk, beginning a Senate career that would continue until 1999. In 1980, Glenn won re-election to the seat, defeating Republican challenger Jim Betts. In 1986, Glenn defeated challenger U.S. Representative Tom Kindness.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Glenn and Metzenbaum (who was elected to the Senate in 1976) had strained relations, even though they were both from the same party and the same state. There was a thaw in 1983 when Metzenbaum endorsed Glenn for president, and in 1988, in response to a charge by Metzenbaum's opponent George Voinovich that Metzenbaum was soft on child pornography, Glenn appeared in a television ad in support of Metzenbaum.

Glenn was one of the five U. S. Senators caught up in the Keating Five Scandal after accepting a $200,000 contribution from Charles Keating. Glenn and Republican Senator John McCain were the only Senators exonerated. The Senate Commission found that Glenn had exercised "poor judgment," but nothing worse. The association of his name with the scandal gave Republicans hope that he would be vulnerable in the 1992 campaign. Instead, Glenn handily defeated U. S. Rep. R. Michael DeWine to keep his seat. This 1992 re-election victory was the last time a Democrat won a statewide race in Ohio until 2006; DeWine later won Metzenbaum's seat upon his retirement.

In 1998, Glenn declined to run for re-election. The Democratic party chose Mary Boyle to replace him, but she was defeated by then-Ohio Gov. George Voinovich.

Glenn made a bid to run as Vice President with Jimmy Carter in 1976, but Carter selected Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Glenn also mounted a bid to be the 1984 Democratic Presidential candidate. Early on, Glenn polled well, coming in a strong second to Mondale. It was also surmised that he would be aided by the almost-simultaneous release of The Right Stuff, a film about the original seven Mercury astronauts in which it was generally agreed that Glenn's character was portrayed in an appealing manner. However, Glenn apparently turned his attention to national politics too early, neglecting the sensitive voters of the Iowa caucuses. Media attention turned to Mondale, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson, leaving Glenn the strongest also-ran. The 1984 presidential bid left Glenn with a substantial campaign debt that took years to pay off.

During his time in the Senate, he was chief author of the 1978 Nonproliferation Act, served as chairman of the Committee on Governmental Affairs from 1987 until 1995, sat on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees and the Special Committee on Aging. Once Republicans regained control of the Senate, Glenn also served as the ranking minority member on a special Senate investigative committee chaired by Tennessee senator and actor Fred Dalton Thompson that looked into allegations China attempted to influence U. S. politicians prior to the 1996 elections (See campaign finance scandal). There was considerable acrimony between the two very high-profile senators during the life of this committee, which reached a level of public disagreement between the two leaders of a Congressional committee seldom seen in recent years.

Public affairs institute

Glenn helped found the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at the Ohio State University to encourage public service in 1998. On July 1, 2006 the institute merged with OSU's School of Public Policy and Management to become the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. Today he holds an adjunct professorship at both the Glenn School and Ohio State's Department of Political Science.

Family

Raised in Cambridge as well as New Concord, Ohio, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor, whom he met in New Concord and with whom he played in the band; they are the parents of two children, David and Carolyn. Both Glenn and his then-future wife, Annie, attended Muskingum College in New Concord.

Glenn's former New Concord home has been made into an education center, teaching American history beginning in 1944.

John Glenn is part of the Glenn-Macintosh clan of Scotland. In 1963, Glenn received a letter from a young girl from Sheffield, England named Anne Glenn. The letter, congratulating him on his orbit around the Earth, enclosed a family tree showing that Anne's father, George Arthur Thomas Glenn, and Glenn himself were cousins.

On August 4, 2006, Glenn and his wife were injured in an automobile accident on I-270 near Columbus, Ohio and were subsequently hospitalized. They were released on August 6, after being treated for their injuries. Glenn suffered a fractured sternum and a "very sore chest", as remarked by Glenn. The driver of the other car was not injured, but Glenn was cited for failure to yield the right-of-way. Mrs. Glenn was treated for minor injuries.

Medals & Decorations

Military

• Distinguished Flying Cross x6,
• Air Medal x19
• Navy Unit Commendation
• Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal
• Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
• American Campaign Medal
• World War II Victory Medal
• China Service Medal
• National Defense Service Medal
• Korean Service Medal
• United Nations Service Medal
• Korean Presidential Unit Citation
• Navy Astronaut Wings
• Naval Aviator Badge
• Marine Corps Astronaut Medal

Civilian

• NASA Distinguished Service Medal
• Congressional Space Medal of Honor

Trivia

• Glenn guest starred on Frasier as himself in the episode "Docu. Drama" which revolves around a space documentary for radio.
• Glenn was against a plan to allow live television coverage in the Senate, fearing it would reduce their debates to sound bites. On the first day cameras were allowed in, he ridiculed the decision by applying makeup to his balding head during comments on the floor. Ironically, it became the most frequently broadcast portion of the debate.
• Glenn was portrayed by actor Ed Harris in the motion picture The Right Stuff.
• Glenn holds the title Kentucky Colonel
• Glenn is a Master Mason and a member of Concord Lodge 688 in New Concord, Ohio.

References

1. Mersky, Peter B. (1983). U.S. Marine Corps Aviation - 1912 to the present. Annapolis Maryland: The Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America. ISBN 0-933852-39-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
2. Glenn, John (1998-11-02). John Glenn: A Memoir. Bantam. p. 169. ISBN 978-0553110746. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Tara Gray. "John H. Glenn, Jr". 40th Anniversary of NASA. Retrieved 2006-11-26.
• Fenno, Richard F., Jr. The Presidential Odyssey of John Glenn. CQ Press, 1990. 302 pp.

External links

• NASA — John Glenn: A Journey
• John Glenn Honored as an Ambassador of Exploration
• John & Annie Glenn Historic Site and Home
• John Glenn Institute, The Ohio State University
• John Glenn's Official NASA Biography
• John Glenn's Flight on the Space Shuttle, STS-95
• Spacefacts biography of John Glenn
• John Glenn Archive
• U.S. Spaceflight History

Template:Persondata

• 1921 births
• Living people
• American astronauts
• American military personnel of World War II
• Military personnel of the Korean War
• Naval aviators
• People from Ohio
• Recipients of US Distinguished Flying Cross
• United States Marine Corps officers
• United States Senators from Ohio
• Scottish-Americans
• American Presbyterians
• Presbyterian politicians
• U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame Inductees