We have don’t real heroes much anymore.
We look up to athletes, who really haven’t done anything other than score touchdowns and hit home runs. We worship actors, who get millions to pretend they are someone else for our entertainment. We admire singers for doing something lots of ordinary folks are capable of doing almost as well.
And nowadays, our heroes, like so much else in society today, is divided along political lines. Some people think Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who kneels during the national anthem, is a hero. Others have stopped watch pro football altogether because of his actions.
That’s why I mourn the death of John Glenn. He was a hero with a capital H.
John Glenn died last week at the age of 95, the last of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, one of the last of the heroes of the space program that I watch and loved as a child.
By the time I was born, Alan Shepard has already become the first American in space and Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth. But the Apollo program which sent men to the moon was just beginning when I was a born. Even as a little boy, I sat in front of the TV, mesmerized by the sights of rockets launching and men walking on the moon.
Those of us of a certain age who grew up with the space program didn’t realize it then – and still may not realize it now – but history books will tell the stories of Glenn, Shepard, Armstrong and Aldrin just like they do the stories of Columbus, Magellan, Lewis and Clark.
So much of Glenn’s life story makes him worthy of being called a hero. He was a veteran of the Korean War and trained as a fighter pilot become joining NASA. He served as a U.S. senator from his home state of Ohio from 1974 to 1999, become a rare member of Congress respected by both sides of the aisle.
In 1998, he returned to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77, he became the oldest person to fly in space.
I was fortunate to interview Glenn in 1989, as part of a series of stories The Macon Telegraph wrote about the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. For the same series, I interviewed Sonny Carter, an astronaut from Warner Robins who became a friend, and several others who had traveled in space.
What impressed me about all of those people – every one of them – was how humble and unassuming they were. It was difficult to get to them talk about their accomplishments. Glenn, for instance, loved talking about NASA and his vision for its future. But when I asked him some questions about his days as one of the original astronauts, he deflected the conversation, almost as if what the pioneers of space travel did wasn’t important. He was the first American to ever orbit the Earth, and he acts like it was a Sunday afternoon drive.
We certainly don’t have humble heroes anymore. We have fist pumpers and chest bumpers who holler, “Me, me, me!”
I wish we had more heroes like John Glenn. Unfortunately, they are dying off and we aren’t replacing them with the same kind of men and women of integrity and honor. We need to change that.
Godspeed, John Glenn. Godspeed.
