The Man

In his flight across the heavens, John Glenn was a latter-day Apollo, flashing through the unknown, sending his cool observations and random comments to the earth in radio thunderbolts, acting as though orbiting the earth were his everyday occupation. Back on earth, Glenn seemed to be quite a different fellow--an enormously appealing man, to be sure, but as normal as blueberry pie. He had an engaging, small-town charm, a sturdy character that was etched in the lines on his face, an attractive family, and a deep faith in "a power greater than I am that will certainly see that I am taken care of."

The homely, American Gothic image was an understatement of the real man, for John Glenn seemed almost destined for last week's time of triumph. All of his adult years he has been pursuing the stars. As a test pilot and a combat flyer with 149 missions in World War II and Korea (he holds five Distinguished Flying Crosses and an Air Medal with 18 clusters), Glenn had lived with supersonic speed and the constant possibility of sudden death. To the millions who saw and heard him last week, it was obvious that John Glenn was a perfect choice to become the first American to orbit the earth.

Strict Code. He was raised in New Concord (pop. 2,000), a quiet, shirt-sleeves-and-overalls town in central Ohio, where his father, by turns, was a railroad conductor, the proprietor of a plumbing business, and the owner of the local Chevrolet agency. As a boy, he swam in Crooked Creek, hunted rabbits, played football and basketball, read Buck Rogers, was a great admirer of Glenn Miller, and blew a blaring trumpet in the town band.* Predominantly Presbyterian, New Concord's moral code was such that cigarettes were judged to be instruments of the Devil, and the kids nicknamed the town Saint's Rest. But even for New Concord, young Glenn's standards were strict.

"When we were about twelve, Johnny and I belonged to a group called the Ohio Rangers," recalls the Rev. C. Edwin Houk, now a Presbyterian pastor in Glendale, Calif. "We had taken a vow never to use profanity. One evening the group started singing Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here. I continued with the phrase, 'What the hell do we care.' Well, I can tell you, it didn't sit well with Johnny. He came up to me, white-faced and righteous, and told me to stop. I think he was ready to knock my block off."

In 1939, Glenn entered Muskingum College, a small Presbyterian school in New Concord. He was a substitute center on the football team, got solid B grades, and schemed to get into the war as a pilot. He learned to fly in a Navy program for civilians at New Philadelphia, 35 miles away, then quit college as a junior to join the Navy's preflight program. In 1943 he took the Navy's option to join the Marine Corps, and won his gold wings and gold second lieutenant's bars. Then, resplendent in his dress blue uniform, he came back home to New Concord to marry Annie Castor, daughter of the town dentist, and his sweetheart ever since he could remember.

Three in Nine. In World War II, Glenn flew 59 ground-support missions in the Pacific's Marshall Islands. After the war, he developed a cocksure method of demonstrating his flying skill. Says Marine Lieut. Colonel John Mason: "Johnny would fly up alongside you and slip his wing right under yours, then tap it gently against your wingtip. I've never seen such a smooth pilot."

In the Korean war, Glenn flew F9F5 Panther jets, again on ground-support missions. After going on several missions with Glenn, Ted Williams, the Red Sox leftfielder recalled to duty as a Marine pilot, declared flatly: "The man is crazy," Says Lieut. Colonel Edward Lovette: "We called Glenn ol' magnet tail because his plane was hit so many times in combat."

Late in the war, Glenn got a chance to hunt Russian-built MIG-158 when he was assigned to fly Air Force F-86s up along the Yalu. Characteristically, Glenn was well prepared for the switch to F-86s; back in the States he had taken leave to learn how to fly the hot jet. In his plane, which was named "The MIG-Mad Marine," Glenn got three MIGs in nine days. "Funny how the bullets sparkle when they hit a plane," he wrote home after one victory. "Just light up like little lights every time a bullet hits. Really had them pouring into it. Just chopped it up good until it flamed."

Ordered back to the U.S., Glenn ended up as a test pilot for the Navy's Chance Vought F8U Crusader fighter. On one flight, Glenn showed the determination that later landed him in the cockpit of Friendship 7. He had the F8U up to Mach 1.2 when something snapped and the plane veered sharply. Most test pilots would have gingerly guided the plane back to the base, but Glenn, scribbling notes all the while, stubbornly pushed the fighter up to Mach 1.2 two more times to see if it would happen again. It did. When he finally landed, Glenn discovered that 24 ft. of the trailing edge of a wing had been broken off.

The Art of Getting Ahead. Early in his career, Glenn developed the art of "sniveling." Explains Marine Lieut. Colonel Richard Rainforth, who flew beside Glenn in both World War II and Korea: "Sniveling, among pilots, means to work yourself into a program, whether it happens to be your job or not. Sniveling is perfectly legitimate, and Johnny is a great hand at it." In 1957 Glenn sniveled the Marines into letting him try to beat the speed of sound from coast to coast. Flying an F8U, Glenn failed by nine minutes, but he did knock 23 1/2 min. off the coast-to-coast speed record by covering the distance in 3 hr. 23 min. at an average speed of 726 m.p.h.*

Then, in 1959, Glenn resolutely set out to snivel his way into the toughest program of all: Project Mercury. He started with two handicaps: he lacked a college degree, and, at 37, he was considered to be an old man. But Glenn managed to get permission to go along as an "observer" with one prime candidate of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics. When the candidate failed an early test, recalls Rainforth, "Johnny stepped up, chest high, and offered himself as a candidate. They took him.''

Fact Man. Candidate Glenn and 510 others were run through a wringer of mental and physical tests. Doctors charted their brain waves, skewered their hands with electrodes to pick up the electrical impulses that would tell how quickly their muscles responded to nerve stimulation. Glenn held up tenaciously under tests of heat and vibration, did especially well with problems of logical reasoning. Says Dr. Stanley White, a Project Mercury physician: "Glenn is a guy who lives by facts."

To the surprise of no one who ever knew him, Glenn was one of the seven former test pilots who were picked to become the nation's first astronauts. But even among the astronauts, John Glenn stood out in his determination. By his own decision, Glenn spent only weekends with his family in Arlington, lived Monday through Friday at Virginia's Langley Air Force Base so that he could better concentrate on the program. He ran two miles before breakfast every morning, sweated himself from 195 lbs. down to a flat-bellied 168. To train himself to handle a capsule tumbling out of control through space, Glenn spent hours spinning giddily in the fiendishly contrived "Mastif" (multiple axis space test inertia facility) that simultaneously rotated him in three directions, like a carnival ride gone amok. Time and again he rode the giant centrifuge that multiplied gravitational pull to simulate the strains of take-off and landing. Despite his years, Glenn showed the least heart fluctuation of any astronaut. (At lift-off last week, Glenn's pulse rate was a relatively placid no beats per minute. Shepard's rate was 139 and Grissom's was 170 during their lift-offs. All three men normally register between 60 and 70 beats a minute.) At Glenn's suggestion, the astronauts received 5 1/2 days of desert-survival instruction, just in case a capsule came down in the wrong place. Still not satisfied, Glenn went without water for 24 hours to test his reactions.

Minimum Risk. Each of the seven astronauts was given a special responsibility in Project Mercury. Shepard studied the technique of getting the astronaut out of the capsule after landing in the sea. Grissom was in charge of the capsule control system. Glenn specialized in the capsule's cockpit layout, contributed substantially to its design. Among other things, he suggested an auxiliary power system that was adopted by McDonnell Aircraft Corp., designer and builder of the spacecraft. Glenn's own Friendship 7 (which he named himself after consulting his family) was tailor-made to his specifications. He color-coded his instrument panel, arranged the 165 meters, dials, toggles, levers and lamps to suit his taste, and marked guidelines on his window to help gauge his observations.

The tedious preparations of the capsule and the Atlas booster inevitably were timeconsuming. The ten postponements of Glenn's flight added to the frustration, made Project Mercury appear to be earthbound. "We could have put a man up a year ago," explains Operations Director Williams, "but it would have been a maximum-risk situation. It would have been a fifty-fifty chance." When Glenn lifted off last week, he, his capsule and his Atlas-D were as ready as they would ever be for a minimum risk try at attaining an orbit. And John Glenn, tempered by his years of preparation, never doubted his flight would be a success.

*His musical background later stood him in good stead. In 1957, teamed with ten-year-old Star Eddie Hodges of The Music Man, he won $12,500 on a TV quiz show called Name That Tune. *President Kennedy was confused about this flight last week in praising Glenn. Said Kennedy: "Some years ago, as a Marine pilot, he raced the sun across this country--and lost." Glenn could not have raced the sun even if he had wanted to, since he flew from west to east.

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