Ohio native son and American hero John H. Glenn Jr. born 100 years ago

One hundred years ago Sunday, Ohio's native son and American hero John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born in Cambridge.  

Glenn lived a remarkable life that brought him fame, adoration and awe and set the gold standard for public service.

He was a small-town Ohio boy who married his childhood sweetheart and went on to become a fighter pilot in two wars, a test pilot, an astronaut, U.S. senator and a statesman. Some men would feel entitled to brag about any of these achievements but the hallmark of Glenn was humility.

Obituary:John Glenn, American hero and former U.S. Senator, dies at 95

"Dad and mother remained very humble," Lyn Glenn, the couple's daughter, said in a recent interview. "They definitely remained to be very much like people they might have been had they stayed in New Concord. Because their lives were so different, they became very worldly. But they both could walk with paupers and with kings and that's not something that can be done by everyone."

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown first met Glenn in 1969 when Glenn spoke at his Eagle Scout ceremony in Mansfield. Brown, who now occupies Glenn's old Senate office in the Hart Building, became friends with Glenn over the years.

"He had an absolute sense of decency. That's probably the best description. He had a real sense of decency in everything I saw him do," Brown said.

Glenn, who received his pilot’s license in 1941, logged roughly 9,000 hours of flying time and in July 1957 he set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York — 3 hours and 23 minutes. It was the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed, according to NASA's biography of Glenn.

The fame from that flight landed him an appearance on "Name That Tune," a popular game show. Glenn won a $25,000 grand prize, which became a startup college fund for his two children.

On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in a 4 hour and 55 minute flight. Two malfunctions — a loose heat shield and failure of the automatic control system — had Americans holding their breath, according to NASA.

John Glenn:Photos of the remarkable life of John Glenn

Glenn rocketed to American hero status. He got a ticker tape parade in front of 4 million people in Manhattan and a smaller parade in his hometown of New Concord. President John F. Kennedy invited Glenn to give an address to a joint session of Congress and he became a personal friend to Robert F. Kennedy.

Lyn Glenn said her father was recognized around the globe.

"Our family camped clear across the country. We were big campers. And there wasn't a campsite we pulled into or a gas station where he wasn't recognized. I think that was the beginning of knowing and beginning the acceptance that our privacy as a family was changing dramatically," Lyn Glenn said.

He resigned his post as an astronaut in January 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps in January 1965, capping a 23 year military career.

John Glenn enters politics 

Robert F. Kennedy was among those who urged Glenn to run for U.S. Senate. In June 1968, John and Annie Glenn were on the campaign trail with RFK in California when he was shot. Ethel Kennedy asked the Glenns to escort their children back to Virginia and later tell the Kennedy children their father had died. 

"That was tough. That was really tough," Glenn said in a 2012 video interview.

After a bad fall put his political ambitions on hold for several years, Glenn's first bid for office ended in defeat to fellow Democrat Howard Metzenbaum in the 1970 primary. But he won a seat in 1974, the first of four consecutive terms.

As a senator, Glenn focused on nuclear non-proliferation and pushed for more funding for space exploration, education and scientific research.

His political career had its limits. Glenn entered the 1984 presidential race, but he failed to gain traction in the early primaries. He withdrew. 

John Glenn returns to space

He returned to space in October 1998 at age 77 when he joined the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery for a nine-day mission. He became the oldest human ever to fly in space. Glenn was used as a test subject to study the effects of space flight on an older human.

Glenn was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal on August 7, 2009, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012.

Glenn dedicated his time toward civics, science and technology education. In 1999,  Glenn donated his archives to Ohio State University and founded the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, which later became the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest," Glenn said when he donated his papers to OSU.

The Glenn College will mark his 100th birthday with a series of events that reflect on Glenn's legacy, including a campus celebration Aug. 27 when students return to campus and a special exhibit of Glenn memorabilia at Page Hall.

Annie Castor Glenn was by John's side

Always by his side in aviation, politics and education was his wife, Annie Castor Glenn.

The couple met as toddlers in New Concord where their parents were friends. "She was part of my life from the time of my first memory," Glenn wrote of Annie in his autobiography.

They married in April 1943. Whenever Glenn embarked on a perilous mission, the couple exchanged the same lines. "I'm just going down to the corner store to get a pack of gum," Glenn would say. "Don't be long," she would reply.

"They were a unit. They turned to each other. They relied on each other," Lyn Glenn said.

Glenn died December 8, 2016 at age 95. Annie Glenn, died May 19, 2020 of COVID-19 at age 100.

Godspeed, John and Annie.

Laura Bischoff is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.