BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
John Glenn in flight suit.
(AP file photo)
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WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Glenn has letters from critics saying he is too old to be an astronaut.
Send someone younger into space, they say.
The letters, tucked away at his Bethesda, Md., home, were written more than 36 years ago. At the time, Mr. Glenn, the oldest of the seven Mercury astronauts, was training to become the first American to orbit Earth.
"I got letters saying, "You shouldn't go up there. You're going to be almost 41,' " says Mr. Glenn, who turned 77 last month.
It seems absurd now. As ridiculous, maybe, as the psychiatrists who in early 1962 urged NASA to replace Mr. Glenn. After weather and technical problems forced several postponements -- in all, his flight aboard Friendship 7 was delayed 11 times before its Feb. 20 launch -- some experts worried the stress was too much to bear. "Which was ludicrous," Mr. Glenn says.
So maybe it's no surprise how relaxed he appears now. Less than three months before he is scheduled to fly in space shuttle Discovery and become the oldest human ever in space, he courts a confidence not unlike that which carried him safely through two wars, a stint as a test pilot and the uncertainty of the early astronaut program. His casual, unhurried style belies his celebrity status; the accessible senator looks well-wishers in the eye as he shakes their hands, answers questions, signs autographs.
One of his closest friends, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Tom Miller, says Mr. Glenn may be "physically, more tired (from training). But mentally, in my view, he's much more at ease with what's going on. He's back in his own realm."
Back in the space program.
Glenn during flight in 1962.
(file photo)
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Since January, he has juggled two full-time jobs: astronaut training in Texas and Florida, Senate work in Washington. Meanwhile, he's tried to cater to a slew of journalists eager to cover the biggest space story in years.
"I keep trying to find John Glenn's breaking point," Mary Jane Veno, his longtime administrative assistant, says half-jokingly, "and I only find my own."
Says Scott Carpenter, his friend and former Mercury astronaut: "He's dedicated and he's busy, and John thrives on that."
On a hot, steamy Thursday in the nation's capital, Mr. Glenn's packed schedule includes a permanent subcommittee on investigations hearing, a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting and a Democratic Policy Committee luncheon.
But he also makes time for a TV reporter and a newspaper writer. A magazine journalist is scheduled to interview him by phone. They all want to talk about space.
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His challenge
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Mission: STS-95.
Target launch: 2 p.m. Oct. 29.
Launch site: Kennedy Space Center, Pad 39B.
Duration: 8 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes.
Target landing: 12:04 p.m. Nov. 7.
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And he has several photo opportunities in his office, including one with two 17-year-olds, Jacob Hodesh of Wyoming and Christopher McCracken of Alliance. They're Ohio's representatives to Boys Nation, an American Legion-sponsored program that teaches youths about government. Of course, Mr. Glenn chats about going back to space.
Later, he speaks to a group of Cleveland State University graduate students attending a conference on urban terrorism. Someone dutifully asks a terrorism question; everyone else wants to know about space. And there are tourists who catch a glimpse of the senator exiting the Senate subway below the Capitol; their eyes widen as they fumble with their cameras, but he's too fast, he's gone. You can read their lips: "That's John Glenn!" Surely they'd like to hear him talk about space, too.
He is an icon because of space.
When the Soviet Union in 1961 demonstrated its superiority in space by putting man in Earth orbit, a fearful and vulnerable America needed to prove it could compete; some U.S. leaders felt the survival of the free world was at stake.
Glenn peers in capsule that took him to space in 1962.
(AP photo)
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Enter John Glenn, the red-haired plumber's son from New Concord, Ohio. He flew four hours, 55 minutes aboard tiny Friendship 7 and gave a doubting country a reason to believe in itself. When he landed safely, "tears ran like a river all over America," Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff.
He was showered with ticker tape in New York City and praised by President Kennedy. As an elected official, though, he never came close to matching his astronaut glory.
Much of his 24-year Senate career has been devoted to non-glamorous issues such as nuclear non-proliferation and cutting government waste. But his hero status has endured, despite lingering campaign debts from a failed 1984 presidential bid and a brush with a savings-and-loan scandal in which he was cleared of wrongdoing.
Shuttle ride for research
A model of his old spacecraft sits on a display case in his fifth-floor office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Piles of paperwork vie for attention on his desk. A large photo of his wife, Annie, sits near scale models of space shuttles.
"I've always wanted to go up (in space) again, just from a personal experience standpoint," he says. "This time around, there's another purpose to it."
Mr. Glenn steals a few minutes in his Senate office to read the front page of the New York Times.
(Michael Keating photo)
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He won't allow any conversation about the shuttle mission to go more than a sentence or two before he injects the "R" word: research.
"We have the opportunity now to get into some areas of research with regard to aging that I think have the potential of being extremely valuable in the future," he says. "I feel fortunate to be able to qualify physically to be the one do to the research."
Mr. Glenn, a payload specialist on the seven-member crew, will be a human test subject in geriatric experiments that examine similarities between the aging process and what occurs to astronauts in weightlessness. Older people, for example, tend to lose bone and muscle mass, have trouble sleeping and experience decreased cardiovascular strength. That also happens to astronauts in space, but they soon recover on Earth.
The senator became aware of such similarities several years ago while reading a book on astronaut physiology. After consulting with experts, in summer 1996, he asked NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin to consider including geriatric studies on a shuttle mission, with Mr. Glenn on board.
While NASA sought experts' advice, organized scientific conferences and held the proposal up for peer review, Mr. Glenn kept in touch with Mr. Goldin. Frequently.
Mr. Glenn rides the subway to the Senate chamber.
(Michael Keating photo)
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"Can you help me with this friend of yours?" the NASA chief said one day in a phone call to Lt. Gen. Miller. "He's driving me out of my gourd."
The general knows all about Mr. Glenn's aggressiveness, dating to their days as fighter pilots in World War II and Korea.
In Korea, "He was in a different (fighter) group," Lt. Gen. Miller says. "I knew how he flew. I flew down specifically to give him some hints on things not to do. I should have known he wouldn't listen to me. On two different flights, they blew his airplane all to pieces."
Fellow fliers nicknamed him Old Magnet Ass, but Mr. Glenn gave as good as he got, earning five Distinguished Flying Crosses in two wars.
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John Herschel Glenn Jr.
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Occupation: U.S. senator. The Democrat, first elected in 1974, will retire when his fourth term ends Jan. 2.
Born: July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. Moved to New Concord, Ohio, at age 2.
Family: Married since April 1943 to Anna "Annie" Glenn. Two children: David, 52, is an anesthesiologist in Berkeley, Calif.; and Lyn, 51, works on children's issues in St. Paul, Minn. Two grandchildren.
Milestones: One of seven astronauts chosen for the Mercury program. First American to orbit Earth, Feb. 20, 1962. Set a transcontinental speed record flying from Los Angeles to New York in 1957. Will become the oldest human in space when he flies aboard space shuttle Discovery in October.
Education: Bachelor's in mathematics, Muskingum College in New Concord.
Military: Marine Corps pilot, 1943 to 1965. Awarded five Distinguished Flying Crosses for service in World War II and the Korean War.
Pets: Two cats, Pumbaa and Nala.
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Lt. Gen. Miller chuckles about another story, saying the senator "won't own up to this." It harks back to the days when the Millers and Glenns were next-door neighbors in Arlington, Va., and John sought to be named to the Mercury program.
"He was basically 6-foot (tall) by his naval aviation medical records," the general says. But the maximum height for astronauts was 5 feet 11 inches. So, "every once in a while, he'd have a couple of big books on his head."
Maybe it was just a joke, the general says. Or maybe not. Regardless, at the January press conference announcing Mr. Glenn's return to the space program, NASA's Mr. Goldin described him as "the most tenacious human being on the face of this planet."
Training body and mind
Mr. Glenn will allow he is "excited" about a return to space, but emphasizes the geriatric research is the important thing. "My big objective," he says, "is to bring back good enough information that there won't be any doubt that we ought to keep experimenting in this direction."
He reaches for a stack of brown folders near his desk. They are labeled with such esoteric titles as "Commercial general bioprocessing apparatus" and "Advanced organic separation." Inside are instructions for experiments Mr. Glenn will conduct in space. He points to schedules that show how he'll spend his time down to five-minute intervals. The detail-driven senator seems in his element.
Mr. Glenn stops for a snapshot with young admirers in the Capitol.
(Michael Keating photo)
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"He's always enjoyed the work in the Senate," says his press secretary, Jack Sparks, "but sometimes in the Senate, it is a lot of butting heads. Whereas, at NASA, it's people working together for a common goal. There's a lot of classroom work. A lot of science work. Those are things he really enjoys."
Mr. Glenn has received 500 hours of astronaut instruction at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And he says he has spent at least that much time at home poring over manuals that, if stacked, would reach 3 feet or higher.
His biggest challenge?
"I'm far less facile on computers than my colleagues are. A year or so ago, the staff here almost insisted I get this thing," he says of the PC at his desk. He chuckles. "I'm up to where I can get my e-mail most of the time."
A message scrolls across the monitor, installed by his teen-age grandsons during a visit the week before: "John Glenn (Grandpa) is the greatest senator - grandpa of all time."
And perhaps one of the most physically fit. In Houston, he has rappelled down the side of the space shuttle and been spun around a centrifuge. The demands of astronaut training haven't exhausted him, he says.
For years, he's kept in shape by power walking a couple of miles four or five times a week at home in Bethesda. More recently, he began working out with weights.
"I get aches and pains once in a while like everybody else. But I don't have any rheumatism or arthritis or anything like that. Never have."
Ms. Veno, who talks with him several times a week when he trains in Houston, says conversations typically go like this:
Ms. Veno: Is it physically demanding?
Mr. Glenn: Oh, yeah, it's really tough.
Ms. Veno: Are you handling it?
Mr. Glenn: Oh, yeah.
Ms. Veno: Would you tell me if you weren't?
Mr. Glenn: Oh, heck no.
Training has caused him to miss 34 of 212 Senate votes this year. But he says he has not and will not break a vow to be in the Senate whenever his vote could mean the difference on major legislation.
This month, while the Senate is in recess, he's back in Houston. "I don't think with something like this you can ever say you're satisfied with your level of training," he says. "I always wanted another three days before any final exam I ever took."
Oct. 29, he says, will be "the final exam, big time."
Family concerns
Anna "Annie" Glenn, his wife of 55 years, probably would prefer he skip it.
"She didn't really try to talk me out of it," Mr. Glenn says. "But I knew from her attitude toward it that she was really not in favor of this."
Another chuckle.
John and Annie Glenn have been married 55 years.
(Michael Keating photo)
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"She didn't have to say anything. She knew that I always wanted to go back up again. She's known that for 35 years. But certainly neither one of us ever thought it would happen."
Mrs. Glenn, hoping to forestall an onslaught of reporters, declined to be interviewed for this story.
The senator got permission from mission commander Curt Brown for Mrs. Glenn to attend briefings in Houston. The Glenns' son and daughter, David and Lyn, and David's children, Zach and Daniel -- all of whom have voiced concern about Mr. Glenn's upcoming flight -- also have been to Houston.
Observing the training firsthand has made family members more comfortable, the senator says. NASA officials have joked that if for some reason John Glenn cannot fly, 78-year-old Annie will be ready.
Lt. Gen. Miller says if tragedy were to occur, the Glenn family "would understand that the sacrifice was done in the interest of helping others. They've accepted that now, and they're all behind him, 100 percent."
Some observers, though, have criticized Mr. Glenn's return to space as a nostalgia trip he earned by defending the Clinton administration during last summer's Senate campaign finance investigation. "That's the biggest canard we ever had around here," the senator says. "I never had one conversation with the president or the vice president or any of the staff in the White House -- not one -- during that whole thing."
He also brushes aside critics who say little will be learned from sending one aging astronaut into space. "Where on earth do you start a database? You start it with one data point and add to it as you go along."
Critics are nowhere to be found this day. A receptionist in the senator's outer office has a caller from North Carolina on the line. Mr. Glenn is his hero, the caller says. He'd like two autographed photos -- of Glenn the astronaut and Glenn the senator.
Sorry, the receptionist says. "We have so many requests." About 400 a week. Only one autograph per person, she explains. (For the record, requests for autographed astronaut photos are outpacing senator photos more than 2-to-1.)
Others call or write to say the upcoming mission inspires them. A 76-year-old Tiburon, Calif., woman wrote that despite having a leg amputated, she learned to fly a helicopter three years ago. "I'm so glad that you can go up again," her letter says. "GO! GO!"
A flight to inspire?
Even some space experts think Mr. Glenn's flight will have more inspirational than scientific value.
John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, says he would like to hear Mr. Glenn "talk more about "the right stuff' and talk less about all this medical research foolishness."
The senator suppresses that notion like a gyroscope correcting a wobble. He'll only go so far as to say inspiration could be "a good side benefit."
Others have suggested it's much more than that. NASA's Mr. Goldin has said of Mr. Glenn's flight: "Is it just science? No. Inspiration is part of the American psyche."
Says Mr. Glenn: "You don't do these things as a stunt. This isn't like going over Niagara in a barrel or walking a high wire between the World Trade Center buildings. You're doing it because of basic research that may benefit people right here on Earth.
"If people like what we're doing in some way, and admire that, well, so be it. And that's good."
Some observers have speculated Mr. Glenn is reluctant to talk about the inspirational value of his flight because it will give ammunition to those who say he's getting a joy ride.
"I don't think that's it at all," says Ms. Veno, his aide. "I think it's consistent with his reaction to the hero aspect. I think for people like John, it's hard to accept that they have that kind of impact. He probably thinks that's attaching more importance to him than he deserves."
Len Weiss, who has worked with the senator for 22 years, agrees. He is minority affairs director of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "I don't think a fear of criticism is determining what he says about this flight. He says what he believes. What you see is what you get."
What you see, often, is a man passionate for detail. A technocrat who enjoys poring over official reports that even Mr. Glenn has said would make most people's eyes glaze over.
But Ms. Veno says her boss "really is a pretty emotional person, which a lot of people don't have the privilege of seeing."
The view from space
You wonder what his emotions were on Feb. 20, 1962. What he was thinking and feeling when he looked out the window of Friendship 7. What he will think on Oct. 29 as he blasts off from Launch Pad 39B.
"This isn't something where you go up there and say, "Here I am looking back at the world, and this has changed my life forever,' " Mr. Glenn says.
But then he softens a bit. He recalls some astronauts found God in space. Jim Irwin returned from the moon and created an evangelical ministry, High Flight. Charlie Duke became a born-again Christian and president of Duke Ministry for Christ.
"Did I have an experience like that? No," he says. But Mr. Glenn, a lifelong Presbyterian, took his faith seriously before he left Earth's gravity. And still does. At home, he and his wife say grace before every meal.
But yes, he was moved, he says.
"When you're up there, you're viewing things from a different vantage point than human beings have ever looked at Earth. You get a new appreciation for the fragile little existence we have here. "You fly over the Middle East, and you look down, not a cloud in the sky, and you think of all the problems through the centuries that have come out of that area, and it's so beautiful, looking down on it. You think, with all these manmade problems we've got there, why can't we solve some of these things. You can't help but think a few things like that."
He is not thinking about research now.
"Ever since I was a kid, I've thought sunrises and sunsets were particularly beautiful. Up there, you see a sunrise or sunset occuring at 18 times normal speed. Up there, you see the colors of the rainbow right across the whole spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet."
Photos can't quite capture that luminous quality in the way the human eye can, he says.
"It gives you a new appreciation for God's creation, I guess, and certainly a new appreciation of the fragility of the world in which we live."
Mr. Glenn has strayed as far off course as he cares to.
"This is set up on a very tight timeline, and we're going to be very, very busy. But I can guarantee you, when I am not absolutely engrossed in something else, I am going to be over at the window." It's Friday morning, and in a few hours, the old astronaut will leave for Boston to meet with a researcher who is heading up one of the geriatric experiments.
Most likely they won't discuss sunrises and sunsets.
