Patrick.Baynes

 John Glenn was a man of many great achievements. He was born on July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. His father was John Herschel Glenn Sr., who was a plumbing contractor, and his mother was Clara Sproat Glenn. He had no true genetic siblings because two of Glenn’s would be siblings died in infancy. His parents adopted his sister Jean. John Glenn grew up in New Concord, Ohio near Cambridge where he was born. In 1939 he graduated from high school and went to Muskingum College which is a Presbyterian school in North Concord. The religion that Glenn was part of believes that everyone has certain talents and they should use each talent fully. At Muskingum College he studied chemical engineering; he left to enlist in Naval Aviation Training in 1943 after the United States entered World War II. April in the same year he also married Anna Margret Castor and had two children John David Glenn and Carolyn Ann Glenn.
 * __John H. Glenn Jr. __**

In March 1943 Glenn was moved into war by the United States Marine Corps to the VMO-155 squadron in the Pacific. This specific squadron flew F4U Corsairs. They were based in Majuro in the Marshall Islands. In this squadron John Glenn flew of bombing and strafing missions against the enemy in the Pacific. After returning to the United States he was a flight instructor and was promoted to Captain in July 1945. After the end of the war he decided to stay with the Marines. After a couple of years of peace he ended up in another war, the Korean War. In this war he flew ground support missions with the Marines and air-to-air combat missions in the Air Forces new F-86 fighter jets. During the war, between February and September 1953 he flew 90 missions in total. During these missions he ended up having people know him because he fought the enemy at a close range; sometimes he would then come back with what looked like not flyable airplanes. Once he even came back from mission with an airplane with over 200 bullet holes in it. He returned from Korea in February 1953 and was then promoted to major by the Marines. After his return he wanted to make up the college degree he never got so he started working super hard to get one. He finally got a degree in 1962; but it took a long time studying engineering by himself and attending military service schools. At this point he was send to the Navy’s Patuxent River test pilot school by the Marines to learn, of course, as the name suggests, how to be test pilot.

After leaving test pilot school John Glenn then made a plan to fly a F8U Crusader jet across the United States and try to break the transcontinental speed record. The Navy and Marine Corps gave him permission to try. On July 16, 1957 he flew from Los Angles, California to New York City, New York in only 3 hours 23 minutes. Yet he still had to refuel in air 3 times. This got him a 5th Distinguished Flying Cross. This medal was one of his many other medals that had been awarded to him in World War II and the Korean War. Around this time the United States and Russia were entering the space race. So because of that the United States started Project Mercury, a project to get man into space. John Glenn decided to go through a process used by what would become NASA to choose astronauts. At the end John Glenn was chosen along with 6 other people to be the first astronauts. Later that month (April 1959) he was also promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Because of this he became the oldest astronaut by age and military rank. During the suborbital flights of two of his fellow astronauts in 1961 he was backup pilot. After their flight, because of their success, John Glenn was chosen to be the first person to go a mission that goes into full orbit around the Earth. His spacecraft was the Friendship 7 and he flew it around the Earth 3 times. This day, February 20, 1962, off all days in his life, made him famous. On this famous flight which lasted 4 hours 55 minutes the world also had the first ever technological problems in space. The problem was that a sensor in the spacecraft showed that the heat shield on the craft had became partially unattached. Lucky for Glenn it had not totally fallen off or he would have died going back into the Earth’s atmosphere because of the heat. During this 4 hour 55 minute flight he flew between 98.9 and 162.5 miles high, travelled from daylight to darkness in 2 hours, flew over Africa, the Indian Ocean, Australia, the Atlantic Ocean, the west coast of the United States, and Florida, and had over 18 radar stations around the world tracking its flight. Besides the heat shield, more trouble popped up of a radar station in Guaymes, Mexico. The trouble was that the controls that automatically controlled the spacecrafts altitude malfunctioned. So John Glenn had to control the space craft manually. Because of this event Glenn became the first human to ever control a spacecraft in space by hand. The space craft was finally picked up where it landed in the Atlantic Ocean by the US destroyer Noa after it fell through the atmosphere.

After his time in space was done John Glenn took part in parades in New York City, New York, Washington D.C. and his hometown New Concord, Ohio. After become friends with John F. Kennedy, Kennedy suggested for him to run for a public office. In 1964, after Kennedy’s death, he fell on his ear in his bathroom and suffered a severe inner ear injury. During hospitalization because of this injury he stopped trying to retire from the Marines and stopped his attempts of trying to run for U.S. senator of Ohio. Later in 1964, he recovered and was able to fly jet fighters with the Marines again. Although he was still with the Marines he didn’t want to be promoted because he thought he was going to retire soon. But the president at the time, Lyndon Johnson, didn’t do any such thing. Instead he hosted a ceremony at the White House in October1964 and promoted John Glenn to Colonel. After getting this rank advancement he soon retired from the Marines in January 1965.

After this his career in business started. In 1969 he decided to run for senate again bur lost in a close race during the Democratic Primary. Not wanting to give up he again tried for the senate in 1974.This time he was facing the same opponent as the time he lost in 1969 but this time he won by over 1,000,000 votes. The next election he was reelected to the Senate by a win of 1.6 million votes. This was the largest difference between two people in Ohio’s history of politics.

In April 1980 he continued his political career by announcing he would run for the Democratic Presidential nomination. In the end he lost but he did not end his political career there. He got reelected to the senate in both 1986 and 1992. In 1997 he decided he would end his political career and chose to see if he could be sent into space again to study the effects of space on the elderly.

Thirty years after his historic flight he reentered space for 9 days on the Discovery on October 26, 1998. He then became the oldest person to ever go into space. In 1999 he finally retired from the Senate and published an autobiography called __John Glenn: A Memoir__.

Up to this day he is still alive and has always been a man who believes doing your duty to the country. He is always hard-working and rarely given up on most things. Also he values great things and is overall a very kind man.

 I chose to study John H. Glenn because he seemed to be an interesting man and seemed to value great things. Lastly, I chose him because his trip into space seemed like a cool thing to learn about. Overall, John Herschel Glenn Jr., has lived a very long and dutiful life.

__**Bibliography **__

Author: Adams, Simon; Ashe, Caroline; Chrisp, Peter; Johnson, Emma; Langley, Andrew; Weeks, Marcus Title: 1000 Makers of the Millenium Place of Publication: New York, New York Publishing Company: DK Publishing Inc. Year of Publication: 1999

Author: Durant, F.C, III Title of Article: Glenn, John Herschel, Jr. Tiltle of Encyclopedia: Encyclopedia Americana Place of Publication: Danbury, Connecticut Publishing Company: Grolier Incorporated Year of Publication:1998

Author: Kozloki, Lillian D. Title of Article: Glenn, John Herchel, Jr. Tiltle of Encyclopedia:World Book Encyopledia Place of Publication: Chicago Publishing Company: World Book Inc. Year of Publication: 2006

Title of Article: John Herschel Glenn, Jr. Tiltle of Origanal Publication: Encyclopedia of World Biography Publishing Company: Gale Year of Publication: 1998 Date accessed: 9/30/09 : __//www.galenet.galegroup.com/>//__

Title of Article: John Glenn Tiltle of Origanal Publication: Contemporary Authors Online Publishing Company: Gale Year of Publication: 2009 Date accessed: 10/2/09 : //__www.galenet.galegroup.com/>__//