American hero John Glenn dies at 95
The headlines practically write themselves: “American hero.” Quintessential American hero.
When I read that Glenn had died at 95 my first reaction was surprise that he was still alive. After all, he was named an astronaut in my youth, and he wasn’t even all that young back then. I well remember that Life magazine cover, back when Life was what everyone read:
September 1959. John Glenn is the one with the bowtie.
Glenn’s list of accomplishments reads as though it was written by Hollywood:
He was the first American to orbit the Earth, a war hero fighter pilot, a record-setting test pilot, a longtime senator, a presidential candidate and a man who defied age and gravity to go back into space at 77.
But those were just his accomplishments. What made John Glenn was more his persona: He was a combat veteran with boy next door looks, a strong marriage and nerves of steel. Schools were named after him. Children were named after him. His life story of striving hard, succeeding, suffering setbacks and high-flying redemption was as American as it gets. Add to that unflagging devotion to a wife he has known since childhood and unerring service to his country.
“Known since childhood”? Try “known since toddlerhood.”
One of the most interesting things about Glenn was that in his private life he was so conventional, and even in some ways insular. He married a woman he had met, as he himself said, “in the playpen” and known his entire life. And he stayed with her; they were married a remarkable 73 years, and she survives him, so they both shared not only their lives but longevity too. And yet those lives were anything but conventional in terms of what they did. Couples often make promises before marriage, and only sometimes are those promises kept. But Glenn certainly fulfilled this one, didn’t he?:
“I promised her on our wedding day I’d do everything I can to make sure our life is never dull,” Mr. Glenn said.
The announcement of Glenn’s death engenders reflection on how people decide to live their lives. Glenn’s life was very very large: one of action and movement in his outer life, rock-solid stability in his inner life and personal relationships. It made me think of Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” and how Glenn resembled the hero in that poem in some ways and was the opposite in others.
The poem begins with restlessness: “matched with an aged wife,” Ulysses desires to set sail again. Glenn adored his “aged wife,” but he “set sail” again when he went back into space at 77. He continued to be active into his 90s, and to “drink life to the lees.” :
…Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices…Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
RIP, John Glenn.
A FB friend told this story:
“(circa 2002) I met John Glenn and heard his story of taking his wife to Florida to see a launch, so she won’t worry. The launch blew up on the pad right while she watched. He still went. A very brave and gracious guy.”
A very brave and gracious wife.
ScottJ:
I saw an interview with his wife where she said she was terrified, particularly that first time, that he would not return. But she never tried to stop him in any way.
I’m sure it would have been futile if she had. She knew the kind of man she married, and she knew what drove him.
The last man to achieve a season batting average of .400 in baseball (1941) was Ted Williams. Who just happened to have also been John Glenn’s wingman* in the Korean War. Williams described Glenn in combat as “Absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw.”
*flies beside and slightly behind the lead pilot, watching the lead pilot’s back
John Glenn: “Annie, listen to me, OK? You listening? If you don’t want the Vice President, or the TV networks, or anybody else to come into the house, then that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. They are not coming in, and I will back you all the way, a hundred percent on this. And you tell them that, OK? I don’t want Johnson or any of the rest of them to set as much as one toe inside our house.”
Annie Glenn: “OK.”
John Glenn: You tell them that – that Astronaut John Glenn told you to say that.
The Right Stuff (1983)
It’s time to make America great again.
My one criticism of Glenn was his bumping a younger astronaut off the flight rotation to fulfil a personal desire to go back in space in the shuttle. I think he should have been bigger than that.
After 73 years of marriage – and even longer knowing each other – my heart breaks for Annie.
I had the opportunity to meet both Col Glenn, USMC ret**, and his wife at the home of a friend who was on his Senatorial staff. They were both as gracious as you could imagine.
I can also report that my retired Navy friend, and his wife, loved and respected each of them without reservation.
**Rightly or wrongly, I assign greater significance to being a Marine Colonel than to U.S. Senator; on the assumption that there are no incompetent, cowardly Cols in the Marine Corps, while on the other hand.
Amazing! 73 years long!
I’ve never read “Ulysses” all the way through. That was nice. It makes me think of my own life, such as it is. Right now, I feel sometimes as if I’m in a holding pattern – work, eat, sleep; work, eat, sleep.
Oh, yes, there is the church family in there, no mistake. But the ol’ job is really getting out of hand as far as laying claims on my time. I’m already setting a personal record for hours on the timecard in one week, and I’m not done yet – on call for much of Saturday and Sunday. And this after having had several 12+ hour days in a row already. Next week promises more of the same. I’m just trying to survive until the holiday break at this point.
But what with my plans (if you can call them that) to spend as much time as possible this weekend getting rested – and realizing to my annoyance that my agreeing to take one for the team this Sunday inadvertently ruled out my attendance at a concert I had considered attending – that line “And vile it were/For some three suns to store and hoard myself” stung a little.
It didn’t make me feel wretched or induce self-pity – I already had that going on independently. It happens to me from time to time. But it falls in line with the old story about Julius Caesar thinking about what Alexander had achieved by the time he was Caesar’s age at the time. And it even brings to mind a James Bond theme song that’s been growing on me, the one from The World Is Not Enough: “The world is not enough/But it’s such a perfect place to start…”. That one works with a different emotional dynamic and context, of course, but not that different from these other examples.
I’m in a slow-motion mid-life crisis, and I look at Glenn and others of that sort and wonder where some of my life went. I’ve had it told me once or twice by people of new acquaintance that I seem to have lived an interesting life, but I find this a little hard to credit. Not that it hasn’t had its points so far, but I think I could have made more of it than I have to this point.
Listening to all this, you’d think I was much older than I am, I guess. I don’t know what the ultimate effect of reading “Ulysses” will be, but it definitely gets the gears turning. Something similar happened to me once when I read The Great Gatsby in the year when I turned 30, which was the precise age of the narrator in that novel, if you recall. Running across that fact in the story, and noting that that same character (Nick) was a Midwesterner like me, put a uniquely wry shade on the whole work in my eyes.
Will “Ulysses” turn out to be a similar marker? One of those life-changing personal encounters with great literature? We shall see. But in the meantime, thanks for your reflections, Neo.
Philip:
Let’s just say I can identify with a lot of what you’re saying.
And I’m probably older than you.
Unfortunately, I do not recall any distinguishing features of his US Senate career. I remember him as a bland, go-along Senator.
In the right lower corner of the Life photo is Virgil “Gus” Grissom, one of three who died together in a capsule fire before launch.
No one names their son Virgil any more.
Frog:
If I recall correctly, practically no one named their son “Virgil” even back then, and when they did, Virgil was called something like “Gus.”
Then again, it used to be more popular: