Senior citizens beamed with pride Thursday as the 77-year-old John Glenn returned to space.
As Discovery and Mr. Glenn tore into the sky, Margaret Hoffman and more than 100 other seniors at the Masonic Geriatric Healthcare Center in Wallingford, Conn., burst into applause.
"God bless him!" said Mrs. Hoffman, 83, tears trickling down her cheeks. "This guy's got everything in him that America needs." "I think he's doing it for us, for senior citizens," said Adelaide Samuelson, 91. "He is showing what we can do. We're not all sitting around doing nothing."
Yeager smells a stunt
SAN ANTONIO -- Mr. Glenn's return to space is a multimillion-dollar publicity stunt to boost interest in NASA, test pilot Chuck Yeager says. Mr. Glenn's mission is "hype, and God only knows NASA needs it real bad," said the man who broke the sound barrier 51 years ago.
"It's a payoff to Glenn for his support of Clinton and also the NASA budget," Mr. Yeager, a retired brigadier general who lives in Northern California, told the San Antonio Express-News.
Woman pilot not a fan
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Bernice Steadman declined an official invitation to watch the launch -- she's still upset at Mr. Glenn's sexist remarks nearly four decades ago.
Ms. Steadman is a surviving member of the Mercury 13, the little-known cadre of women pilots who were trained as astronauts in 1961. "He called us "90 pounds of recreational equipment,' " Ms. Steadman told the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
"It's just a fact," Mr. Glenn told a committee in 1962. "The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes. That women are not in this field is just a fact of our social order."
McAuliffe's mom excited
PEORIA, Ariz. -- Christa McAuliffe's mother breathed a sigh of relief Thursday. It was the first shuttle launch Grace Corrigan had watched since her daughter, a New Hampshire teacher, and six others were killed when the Challenger shuttle exploded in 1986.
Ms. Corrigan said Mr. Glenn's return to space to conduct experiments on aging brought more interest to the space program from senior citizens, including herself. "At first I thought the flight was a publicity ploy, which I'm sure it is. But then as it went along I became more and more excited for him," she said.
Newspaper time-travels
ATLANTA -- Readers of the Atlanta Journal were blasted 36 years into the past Thursday when the newspaper replaced its front page with a full-size, black-and- white reproduction of its coverage of Mr. Glenn's first spaceflight.
"Glenn Whirls in Space, "Feeling Fine, All Is Go,' " screamed the headline on the reprinted afternoon paper. The Journal didn't even change the date beneath the masthead: Feb. 20, 1962.
Celebrities abound
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Leonardo DiCaprio was there. So was Evander Holyfield, Prince Felipe of Spain, and Jimmy Buffett. And dozens of senators and congressman rooting for one of their own. Thursday's launch attracted famous people of every stripe.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was there. Members of the band Aerosmith reportedly were there. And baseball legend Ted Williams, with whom Mr. Glenn was a comrade in arms during the Korean War, traveled from his Florida home.
Voices
Questioner: "What's on your mind while waiting for liftoff?" Former Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra: "Well, sir, you sit thinking that all this equipment needed to blast you off was provided by the lowest bidder."
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• Lost panel no big deal
• New Concord tense, joyous
• Schools want to build on day's momentum
• Tristate couple relive '62 with kids
• 250,000 at launch party
• Awestruck Clinton salutes "genuine American hero'
• Glenn's first words
• Launch highly defined on TV of future
• Questions and answers
• Back to Glenn Page
