John Herschel Glenn, Jr., the first American to orbit the Earth and decades later the oldest person in space, who served four terms as a U.S. senator from his native Ohio, died Thursday in Columbus. He was 95.
A cause of death was not reported. Mr. Glenn had been hospitalized for more than week at James Cancer Hospital, an official with the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University reported Wednesday.
The retired Marine Corps colonel said in 2015 that he’d lost half his eyesight through macular degeneration, and that he’d suffered a small stroke after heart-valve replacement surgery in 2014.
He was a test pilot, combat fighter pilot, astronaut, and public servant and figure for decades.
He served in the Senate as a Democrat, sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, and actively campaigned for Democratic candidates at all levels.
Still, Mr. Glenn’s legacy transcended party, and an outpouring of accolades began soon after his death was announced.
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President Obama said Mr. Glenn inspired “generations of scientists, engineers, and astronauts who will take us to Mars and beyond — not just to visit, but to stay.
“On behalf of a grateful nation, Godspeed, John Glenn,” the President said, echoing words first uttered during Mr. Glenn’s 1962 lift-off into space by Scott Carpenter, Mr. Glenn’s fellow Mercury astronaut — and the second American to orbit the earth. Mr. Glenn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
President-elect Donald Trump in a tweet called Mr. Glenn “a great pioneer of air and space. He was a hero and inspired generations of future explorers. He will be missed.”
Gov. John Kasich said Mr. Glenn remained “Ohio’s ultimate hometown hero” and whether in space or Capitol Hill, “his heart never strayed from his steadfast Ohio roots.”
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said that he and his wife, Connie Schultz, counted Mr. Glenn and his wife, Annie, as mentors and friends.
As astronaut, senator, and iconic American figure, Mr. Brown said Mr. Glenn “saw enormous untapped potential in the nation he loved and he had faith that America could overcome any challenge.”
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio), said he is grateful to have known Mr. Glenn and “to have partnered with him on projects and legislation in Congress, and to have worked with him and served on his advisory board at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at the Ohio State University.”
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Glenn in 1992 as the Republican candidate for Senate.
Despite a tough campaign, Mr. DeWine said Thursday, Mr. Glenn was gracious when Mr. DeWine two years later was sworn in as Ohio’s junior U.S. senator.
“I was proud to serve with him in the Senate for four years, focusing on what we we could do to help Ohio families,” Mr. DeWine said.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) said, “He was truly an American hero on every level, a great family man, a colonel first, last, and always.” Yet he was approachable, she said, recalling a flight back to Washington from Toledo with Mr. Glenn at the controls of his twin-engine Beechcraft.
U.S. Rep Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green), said: “There are few lives, if any, that have been lived more fully than Senator John Glenn’s.”
The clean-cut hero of early manned space flight, the object of ticker-tape parades and of future astronauts’ imaginings, Mr. Glenn in July spoke of an even earlier era as guest of honor at the renaming of Port Columbus as John Glenn Columbus International Airport.
He grew up in New Concord, 70 miles east of Columbus, and told the crowd about asking his parents to stop at the airport so he could watch planes take off and land. The Marine Corps fighter pilot and veteran of World War II and the Korean War spoke of “many teary departures and reunions” at the airport’s original terminal.
Mr. Glenn kept a small plane at Lane Aviation on the Port Columbus grounds for years. He stopped flying a plane at age 90.
He was the last survivor of the Mercury 7, the group of original astronauts idolized in the early days of the space program and then portrayed in the Tom Wolfe book, The Right Stuff, later made into a film. Mr. Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth aboard Friendship 7 in 1962.
Don Thomas, a Cleveland native who flew on the so-called “all-Ohio” space shuttle Discovery mission in 1995, was in first grade when Mr. Glenn went on his orbital flight.
Mr. Thomas and his classmates sat on the gymnasium floor and watched history unfold on a black-and-white television. He later gazed out the window, instead of at his teacher, hoping to spot Mr. Glenn in the sky over Cleveland.
“He had a huge, huge influence on me,” said Mr. Thomas, 61, who now lives in Baltimore. “I think every space shuttle astronaut would tell you the same thing.”
Years later, as Mr. Thomas prepared for his own space mission, Mr. Glenn joined the crew for a day at Johnson Space Center. Four of the five astronauts were Ohioans, and the fifth, Kevin Kregel of New York, was decreed an honorary Ohioan by then-Gov. George Voinovich.
The joke was that the 1995 group was actually the second all-Ohio crew, with John Glenn’s solo flight the first.
As a boy, former NASA astronaut Tom Henricks clipped stories about Mr. Glenn from newspapers and magazines to fill a scrapbook. Mr. Henricks, born in Bryan, Ohio, and raised in Woodville, was commander aboard the the 1995 Discovery flight.
When Mr. Glenn visited, Mr. Henricks gave him a flight in the shuttle simulator and recalled how Mr. Glenn had been able to land it successfully “with very little coaching.”
“That got him excited about flying in space again,” said Mr. Henricks, who now lives in Blanco, Texas.
A Democrat, Mr. Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974. He was re-elected in 1980, 1986, and 1992. He did not seek a fifth term.
In May, 1998, Mr. Glenn was feted as a hero and friend at a dinner held in his honor by The Blade in Washington. Miss Kaptur and Democratic and Republican former mayors of Toledo — Harry Kessler and Donna Owens — spoke in glowing terms.
Mr. Glenn was preparing a return to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Blade, praised Mr. Glenn’s embrace of new adventure. As a memento of the dinner and Mr. Glenn’s adventures from space flight through the Senate, Mr. Block presented him with a montage of photographs from The Blade depicting a multifaceted life.
“He was the greatest aviator I ever met,” Mr. Block said Thursday. “In the 1980s when I was learning to fly, he told me to ‘get an instrument rating,’ so I did. I always hoped to fly right seat [copilot] with him; we talked about it, but much to my regret, that never happened.”
Threats to the Great Lakes brought Mr. Glenn to northwest Ohio several times.
In April, 1974, during a bitter Democratic primary battle against Howard Metzenbaum, Mr. Glenn took a tour of lakefront dikes in Jerusalem Township and called for an international study of Great Lakes water levels to control flooding. Mr. Glenn won the primary and the election.
Mr. Metzenbaum had been appointed to fill the last year in the term of U.S. Sen. William Saxbe (R., Ohio), whom President Nixon named attorney general in 1973. Mr. Metzenbaum, who died in March, 2008, was elected to the Senate in 1976.
During a Toledo news conference in 1981, Mr. Glenn promised to introduce legislation to control agricultural runoff polluting the Great Lakes. He presided over Senate hearings in 1992 on the subject of tainted Great Lakes fish and several months later came to Bowling Green State University and spoke at a conference on Great Lakes water quality.
“Tainted fish are like canaries in the coal mine, warning us of a future blight on a generation of children yet unborn,” Mr. Glenn said at the conference.
Mr. Glenn stayed true to his Ohio roots, despite fame and accomplishments, and was willing to stand with fellow Democrats, even old rivals, said James Ruvolo, a former Lucas County and Ohio Party chairman, who was supporting Mr. Metzenbaurm when he first met Mr. Glenn.
“He was honest, he was forthright, and he was straight with you,” Mr. Ruvolo said. “He never changed.”
Mr. Glenn fought for science funding as he stayed focused on his constituents.
“I think most of his career was spent trying to help regular, ordinary Ohioans,” Mr. Ruvolo said.
Mr. Glenn’s reputation was threatened in the 1980s when he and four other senators were accused of intervening with federal regulators on behalf of savings and loan executive Charles H. Keating, Jr., who would serve time in federal in prison. Mr. Glenn was cleared of wrongdoing after a Senate Ethics Committee investigation and won re-election.
In February, 2004, ahead of the Ohio presidential primary, Mr. Glenn endorsed the candidacy of then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry during a campaign rally at the University of Toledo. Mr. Glenn returned that fall to UT with Mr. Kerry for a rally.
Mr. Glenn was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, to Clara and John H. Glenn. He was a graduate of New Concord High School and Muskingum College, where was a guard on the football team. He had a bachelor of science degree in engineering.
During World War II, he flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific Theater. He flew 90 missions in Korea. He attended test pilot school afterward and, in 1957, set a transcontinental speed record. He was selected as a Project Mercury astronaut in 1959.
After Mr. Glenn’s space flight, he served as a backup pilot and worked in cockpit layout and design. He resigned from NASA in 1964. Afterward, he had executive positions in business and was a former president of Royal Crown Cola.
He served on the board of Toledo-based Fortune 500 conglomerate Questor Corp. and counted its chairman, Paul Putman, among his local friends.
Survivors include his wife, Annie — the former Anna Castor — whom he married in April, 1943; son, J. David Glenn; daughter, Carolyn “Lyn” Glenn, and two grandsons.
Arrangements, including an on-campus remembrance service, are pending, Ohio State President Michael Drake said in a statement.
Staff writers Vanessa McCray, Nolan Rosenkrans, and The Blade’s news services contributed to this report.
Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.
First Published December 9, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
