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John Glenn passes from this earth

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  • John Glenn passes from this earth

    I was concerned when they said he had gone into the hospital recently at his age as it almost always means something is close at hand. He was the last of the Mercury 7. I remember the very big deal when he orbited the earth back in 1962 as an 8 year old living in Maryland. I was heavily into astronomy at that point in my life and would spend hours late at night in the back yard watching the stars with my binoculars to spot satellites after JFK spoke of going to the moon.

    Farewell, John...

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/health...ead/index.html

  • #2
    RIP John .

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    • #3
      :-(
      In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

      Leibniz

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      • #4
        When I was a young child...probably age 4 or 5...his space capsule, Friendship 7, went on a tour of the country for folks to see. I recall vividly it was on display in the rotunda of the State House in Boston. Like many my age, it sparked an interest in space. To my friends and I John Glenn WAS the face of Space.

        What a great American..we were blessed to have you, Colonel Glenn.

        PS: Coolest fact about him...he had Ted Williams as his wingman several times in action in the Korean War.
        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
        Mark Twain

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        • #5
          this year sucks.

          http://www.duffelblog.com/2016/12/go...ck-to-olympus/
          There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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          • #6
            Another unknown fact about him I read...

            In the memoir, Glenn writes that during the Manhattan parade in March 1962 following his space flight, he'd been curious about the NYPD detectives providing security detail for him and his fellow Mercury astronauts.
            Hillary Clinton pays tribute to John Glenn

            On a return visit to New York the following month, Glenn asked for and received permission from the city's chief of detectives to go on a "ride-along" with detectives from the city's 20th Precinct, near what was then regarded by Life magazine as "the toughest block in the world": West 84th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. (These days, it is likely one of the ritziest stretches of real estate in the city's five boroughs.)

            Tagging along with a suit and a baseball cap, Glenn was unrecognized as he went on calls ranging from burglaries to robberies to domestic fights. It was during one of the latter calls that he recalled getting a "big shock": A newspaper photo of Glenn tacked to the wall of a drab apartment in which he wore "nothing but [a] urine collection apparatus." The tack, he recalled, "was placed through my head."

            "Here," Glenn wrote, "was one place I definitely was not a hero, and I realized that the space program, for all its Cold War import and future scientific benefits, and for all the excitement it generated in many quarters, remained remote from people whose hard-pressed lives didn't allow them to appreciate it."

            Glenn's willingness to see somebody else's travails even though his own vanity had been wounded is almost as remarkable as his ascension into space via a ballistic missile. This is the kind of magnanimity that you don't expect to find from a Marine colonel from rural America who literally fell from the sky into the world's embrace.

            You could even call it an advanced form of patriotism, the kind that demands Americans humble themselves when confronted with those for whom the promise of a better tomorrow remains unfulfilled.

            Though we'll never know if Glenn would have gone all the way to the White House, based on his empathic disposition, it's fair to say he would have had my vote.

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