Nation owes gratitiude to John Glenn

Space explorer, warrior and statesman John Glenn, who died Thursday at the age of 95, had a remarkable impact on America during a period when the nation needed a boost. He lived a life filled with adventures and accomplishments most could only dream of, and he did it all while remaining an accessible everyman, quick to smile, and with a strong belief in God and country.

Glenn flew on just two space flights, but set records with both. On his first flight, aboard the Project Mercury Friendship 7 in 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth. On his second flight, at 77, aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1988, he became the oldest person to visit space.

In 1962, as the United States was in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was winning the race to space as the first country to launch a satellite in 1957 and then as the first country to put a man in space in a 1961 suborbital flight.

After launching two suborbital space flights — with astronauts Alan Shepard Jr. and Gus Grissom — the United States was ready to try Earth orbit and Glenn was chosen to make the flight, which orbited the earth three times, and lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds from launch to splashdown.

Before Glenn became an astronaut, he was a decorated fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War. Glenn spent 24 years in the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio until his retirement in 1997.

During his 1998 nine-day space flight aboard the space shuttle Discovery, Glenn held a news conference where he said, “To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible.”

The United States owes a debt of gratitude to this heroic American who boosted the nation’s self-image at a critical time, yet never carried on as the special human being he was.

In death, the nation offers, Godspeed, John Glenn.

— Albuquerque Journal