What America and the world lost when we lost John Glenn: A genuinely heroic man of unquestioned bravery, character and integrity -who thought his wife, Annie, was the real hero.
One of the highlights of my 15 years living and working in the Washington, D.C. area from 1988-2003 were those handful of opportunities, usually outside on Capitol Hill between the Supreme Court and the Senate Office buildings to the north, to speak one-on-one for a few minutes with one of the bravest and most-famous Americans then-alive, Senator John Glenn of Ohio.
@AmyKinLA John Glenn: Genuinely heroic man of unquestioned character/integrity -who thought his wife was real hero! https://t.co/em7p0bBcw3— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 12, 2016
“We tend to think of heroes as being those who are well known,” he wrote, “but America is made up of a whole nation of heroes who face problems that are very difficult, and their courage remains largely unsung. Millions of individuals are heroes in their own right.”
Today, @Astro_Kimbrough and @AstroPeggy from space paid tribute to John Glenn, fellow astronaut and American legend: https://t.co/S56vgeBFnz pic.twitter.com/4Kj9KPRfjA— NASA (@NASA) December 9, 2016
But anyone who lives to be 95 years old doesn't do so without some mis-steps along the way, and certainly John Glenn wasn't immune to this fact, since he was not without his ideological blind spots.
As best-selling historian Victor Davis Hanson noted in a 2005 column on the then-current parlor game in Washington and other urban areas of the U.S. among many prominent members of the Democratic Party and its friends in the news media of comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler because of his administration's policy of keeping Guantanamo open -instead of closing it and moving the prisoners to the U.S., which would have been against the POV of the majority of the American people- Glenn claimed "It's the old Hitler business"
Jewish World Review
Hitler, Hitler, everywhere
By Victor Davis Hanson
June 23, 2005
Then again, even at age 89, he still had the power to speak for many Americans upset at a diminished space exploration program when he openly criticized President George W. Bush's policy of ending the U.S. shuttle program, and instead, paying Russia to launch American astronauts to the International Space Station.
"Operating Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour until successors are ready might end up being cheaper than buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the retired senator said. Flying the shuttles beyond their planned retirement may also be the best way to maximize return on taxpayer investment."
This is but the tip of the iceberg in a fact-filled defense of keeping faith with the origins of the U.S. space program.
Statement of Senator John Glenn (ret.) Regarding NASA Manned Space Flight
Statement of Senator John Glenn (ret.) Regarding NASA Manned Space Flight
I wrote an oped about John Glenn for the @washingtonpost https://t.co/gbYPmgsii2— Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) December 15, 2016
See photos from the early days of @NASA's Project Mercury: http://t.co/SQSj2D31dj pic.twitter.com/0V41o9oyFV— LIFE (@LIFE) October 7, 2015
