John Glenn, First American to Orbit the Earth, Dies at 95

There weren’t a lot of silly pictures taken of John Glenn—mostly because Glenn just didn’t do silly. He did happy, of course. You don’t get the crinkles he had around his sea blue eyes simply because you’ve got the fair, thin skin of the redhead that he was. But if the happy was there, the silly wasn’t. Still, in 1959, when Glenn was announced as one of the original seven NASA astronauts, he knew that he’d have to abide a lot of regrettable silliness—usually at the hands of the space agency and media photographers, who would demand all manner of dreamed-up poses of the deeply American family men the astronauts were intended to be doing deeply American family things. So the staged picnics and happy rough-housing were all set up and shot and then, for Glenn, came the silliest image of all—of the professional fighter pilot and amateur trumpet player, lying on his couch on a lazy afternoon, practicing his playing while his wife Annie relaxes with him. As if a wife could relax while a husband blared a horn in her ear. As if Glenn would even want to put the poor woman through such a thing. But never mind. Glenn was a military man who never, ever received an assignment from a commanding officer without answering yes, sir and then going on to fulfill that assignment with utter professionalism. And if the commander in his new line of work sometimes was a public affairs officer, well, he’d get the yes, sir treatment too. Glen...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Appreciation Astronaut john glenn Senator space Source Type: news