February 20, 1962

On February 20, 1962, I sat staring at the television screen in the 6^th grade classroom of Helen Babb Avery, a teacher at Longino Elementary School in College Park, Georgia. After ten false starts, John Glenn was going to become the first American to orbit the earth. The early days of the American space program involved many stops and starts, holds, scrubs, cancellations. But on this day it was going to happen, at last. We all waited to witness the historic moment of America's entry into orbit. Mrs. Avery was an excellent teacher, but I suspect she welcomed these times when she could put lessons aside and let the students watch history unfold on the television.

When Glenn was lifted aloft by the Atlas missile, we cheered and clapped. We were giddy with America's victory—no matter that Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov had already orbited the earth. Ours was a victory for the free world, broadcast as it was on national television, for all to watch. Thinking about it in this way, we could view Glenn's flight as a victory.

As a sixth grader I thought John Glenn was a great hero. At 39, he was the oldest of the original seven astronauts, and there was concern that his age would put him at risk. He ran 2 miles a day. His wife Annie did not like the public spotlight and avoided interviews. Glenn relished the role of hero, and according to Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff his insistence on proper behavior and all-American values caused the other astronauts to resent and make fun of him. After he left the space program, Glenn was often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, but at the 1976 Democratic convention he gave a keynote speech so dull that, along with other factors, it killed his chances in the national arena. As a senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1998, he served dutifully and well but not remarkably. He was only a man after all.

Walter Brennan was a professional old man. He played an old man in a number of films, and in the television series "The Real McCoys." His voice squeaked and cracked like an old man's. He recorded a song that enjoyed much air play in 1962 called "Old Rivers," about a man he remembered from his youth. He didn't sing the song. He just croaked it, in a plaintive, pathetic, and gruesomely sentimental way. On the opposite side of the single was a song entitled "The Epic Ride of John H. Glenn." It was corn and camp, and I listened to it over and over.