BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[glenn]](/editions/1998/12/17/glenn_150x154.jpg)
John Glenn gives the thumbs-up during Wednesday's parade in Columbus.
(Michael E. Keating photo)
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COLUMBUS — It was probably John Glenn's other-worldly adventures that drew most of the throng who gave the Ohio-born astronaut a hero's welcome here Wednesday.
But Mr. Glenn, who only weeks after his history-making flight on space shuttle Discovery is ending a 24-year Senate career, seemed more interested in talking about the here and now.
“There is nothing I have done in my life that has made me any prouder or been more rewarding than serving for 24 years in the U.S. Senate,” the Ohio Democrat said in a speech before a joint session of the Ohio General Assembly. Minutes earlier, he'd been cheered by thousands who lined Columbus' High Street for a noontime parade.
For Mr. Glenn, that is going some. His life has been full of adventure and excitement.
It is a life that, after beginning in the quiet comfort of small-town Ohio, took him from being a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea to becoming one of America's original Mercury astronauts, blazing the trail 36 years ago in his Friendship 7 capsule as the first American to orbit the Earth.
And, in October, it is a life that led him at the age of 77 — when most men are attempting nothing more daunting than shooting par on a golf course — to become America's oldest astronaut, joining a space shuttle mission that drew the world's attention.
In the time between the Mercury flight and his return to space in Discovery, a whole generation of Ohioans grew up knowing him primarily as a senator.
Wednesday, in an Ohio House chamber filled to the rafters with legislators and other elected officials for whom politics is a way of life, and in a time when impeachment and scandal are in the air in Washington, Mr. Glenn talked of politics as “an honorable profession.”
“It is not a dishonorable job,” Mr. Glenn said. “It is one of the most honorable you can choose. It is akin to the ministry, I believe.
“I believe good people can still make a difference. And I believe we all have an obligation to try.”
With his successor in the Senate, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, standing a few feet away, Mr. Glenn said he will miss being in the Senate, “the debates, the hearings, the issues and the votes.”
Mostly, he said, “I will miss the daily contact with people like you, people who have the guts to climb into the arena, fight hard for what you believe.”
It was a theme that Mr. Glenn has been sounding since February 1997, when he went to Muskingum College in his home town of New Concord and announced that he would not run for re-election to a fifth term in the Senate.
And, in teaching he plans to do at Muskingum College and Ohio State University here, he said he will work with a generation young enough to be his grandchildren.
Mr. Glenn's age is what made his second trip to space unique. His political allies and adversaries in Ohio have often commented on the irony of a man who said he was retiring from the Senate “because there is no cure for the common calendar,” then took on the rigors of a space mission.
Wherever he goes these days — and his homecoming at the Ohio Statehouse on Wednesday was no exception — the astronaut-turned-
politician-turned-astronaut jokes about his age.
“There is absolutely no truth to the rumor,” he told the legislators, “that NASA refused to schedule a space walk for me because they were afraid I'd wander off.
“It is equally false,” he continued, “that when Discovery lifted off, I was the first 77-year-old to leave Florida in something other than a Winnebago.”
For Mr. Glenn, a life in politics did not hold dangers that matched being strapped into a tiny space capsule and blasted into space atop a rocket that no one could guarantee would not explode, but it has not been without struggle.
After his historic Mercury flight in 1962, Mr. Glenn became friendly with President Kennedy and the Kennedy family, who nudged him in the direction of politics.
His first bid for the U.S. Senate in 1964 ended almost as soon as it began, when the former astronaut slipped in a bathtub and sustained an injury that made him drop out of the race.
Four years later, the Ohio Democrat was campaigning for his friend Robert Kennedy, who was pursuing the Democratic presidential nomination. But that venture into presidential politics ended with the assassination of Mr. Kennedy.
Two years later, Mr. Glenn ran for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination and lost to Howard Metzenbaum. He did not return to Ohio politics until 1974, when, this time, he defeated Mr. Metzenbaum in a primary and was elected to his first Senate term that fall.
Since then, he has been easily re-elected every six years.
But the road has sometimes been a rough one. His hopes of gaining the vice presidential nomination were dashed in 1976 and 1988, first by Jimmy Carter and then by Michael Dukakis.
His own campaign for the presidential nomination in 1984 got nowhere; he dropped out after the early primaries. Mr. Glenn was seen as too middle-of-the-road for liberal Democratic primary voters; former Vice President Walter Mondale went on to win the nomination and lose the election to Ronald Reagan. Mr. Glenn returned to the Senate but was left with a multimillion-dollar campaign debt that plagues him still.
Mr. Glenn will leave the Senate in a few weeks with no major pieces of legislation bearing his name, but colleagues say he has had an impact.
U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, the Ohio Republican who was beaten by Mr. Glenn in 1992 but who won an open seat two years later, said recently that Mr. Glenn will be remembered for being “ahead of his time in calling attention to nuclear proliferation.”
Wednesday, Mr. Voinovich, a Republican, said he has worked well with Mr. Glenn over the years he was Ohio's governor.
“He provided leadership on unfunded mandates legislation and as an advocate for sensible environmental legislation,” Mr. Voinovich said.
And, as the only Ohioan to be elected to four consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Voinovich said, “he will be in the history books, big time.”
Parade-watchers know aspects of Glenn's life
Special Coverage of the Discovery mission
![[glenn]](/editions/1998/12/17/glenn_438x450.jpg)