At 8:47 a.m. 50 years ago today, NASA launched John Glenn into orbit. For Americans of a certain age, this is one of those "where were you then" moments that seem to baffle our children and grandchildren.
You take them to the St. Louis Science Center's McDonnell Planetarium, for example, and show them the Mercury capsule, and explain that once upon a time, a 40-year-old Marine officer climbed into one just like it. An Atlas rocket was ignited beneath him, and he flew around the world three times while the whole country held its breath.
They yawn. They know men have walked on the moon and flown shuttles to the space station. They may know that the shuttles are retired now and soon tourists may be able to ride into space. Technological miracles are now personal, not national.
Ah, but there was a time, kids, when the entire country could stand united and watch a man ride a rocket into space — hang his hide out on the line, as Tom Wolfe would put it — and sense that anything was possible.
John H. Glenn Jr. is now 90 years old. Of the seven Mercury astronauts, only he and Scott Carpenter survive. It was Scott Carpenter, as CAPCOM (the guy on the radio) on that Tuesday morning 50 years ago, who said "Godspeed, John Glenn" as the rocket lifted off.
After that, my seventh-grade teacher led us out onto the playground to see if we could spot it streaking overhead. The space age was new and this was in Houston, where NASA was building the manned spacecraft center just down the road. Surely they'd want to fly it nearby. But no.
So back inside we trooped to sweat out the crisis over the heat shield. But with splashdown came our triumph, and in the following days there was the heroic Col. Glenn with President and Mrs. Kennedy and riding in a ticker tape parade and then, poof! He was gone, resurfacing as a Senate candidate from Ohio in 1964, only to withdraw after cracking his head on a bathtub like an ordinary mortal.
Ordinary mortals have to work for a living, so Mr. Glenn joined some boards of directors, among them the board of the Questor Corp., whose holdings included the Fischer pool table factory in Tipton, Mo.
It was November 1972. I was a student, picking up pizza money stringing for United Press International. Go cover John Glenn, the boss said, so I met my boyhood hero at the Jefferson City airport and rode along to the pool table factory, which featured a water tower painted like an eight-ball.
There he waved the American flag and the Questor flag and, on the way back to the airport, mentioned that he would be running for the Senate in Ohio in 1974. He had not yet confirmed that in Ohio, where my story was big news. I always brag that John Glenn gave me my first scoop.
John Glenn would be elected in 1974, and three more times after that. He would go back into space on the shuttle in 1998. But he never again had a day like Feb. 20, 1962. Hardly anyone has.
