John Glenn, who captured the
nation’s attention in 1962 as the first American to orbit the Earth during a
tense time when the United States sought supremacy over the Soviet Union in the
space race, and who rocketed back into space 36 years later, becoming the
oldest astronaut in history, died Dec. 8 at a hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Mr.
Glenn, who in his post-NASA career served four terms as a U.S. senator from
Ohio, was 95.
The death was confirmed by Hank Wilson, communications director
at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University. Mr. Glenn
had a stroke after heart-valve replacement surgery in 2014, but the immediate
cause was not announced.
Mr. Glenn was one of the seven original astronauts in NASA’s
Mercury program, which was a conspicuous symbol of the country’s military and
technological might at the height of the Cold War. He was not the first
American in space — two of his fellow astronauts preceded him — but his
three-orbit circumnavigation of the globe captured the imagination of his
countrymen like few events before or since. Mr. Glenn was the last survivor of
the Mercury Seven.
“John always had the right stuff,” President Obama said in a
statement, adding that Mr. Glenn “reminded us that with courage and a spirit of
discovery there’s no limit to the heights we can reach together.”
In an era when fear of encroaching Soviet influence reached from
the White House to kindergarten classrooms, Mr. Glenn, in his silver astronaut
suit, lifted the hopes of a nation on his shining shoulders. When he emerged
smiling from his Friendship 7 capsule after returning from space, cheers echoed
throughout the land.
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