<strong>By Jay Ambrose</strong>
“The Right Stuff” is the name of a Tom Wolfe book about our early astronauts, and if anyone ever had this stuff, it was John Glenn, dead at 95.
What a man.
He was a fearless, brilliant combat pilot in two wars. As a test pilot, he was the first to cross the continent in a supersonic jet. It made boom sounds in the air, and as he flew across his hometown in Ohio, it is reported that a little boy heard it and ran shouting, “Johnny dropped a bomb, Johnny dropped a bomb.”
The bigger bomb he dropped — figuratively speaking — was becoming the first American to orbit the earth. It came in response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik challenge. The 1957 satellite whirled around us, saying Russians were our technological superiors, our educational system was failing, we could be at a military disadvantage, we were not the nation we thought we were.
We don’t talk about heroes much in America anymore, but Glenn absolutely was one as he helped answer this challenge and then did more.
For a quarter of a century, he served in the U.S. Senate as a thoughtful, decent, honest man. He had received 23 combat awards and would surely have gotten as many political awards if they were also distributed. He did receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
This hero is among others who enabled us to come back against the Soviet Union’s thumbing of its nose from on high. It was no easy matter, seeing as how the Soviets did not slow down, sending Yuri Gagarin up, up and away as the first man in space. We initially struggled. I myself can remember going to school assemblies to see U.S. rockets zoom into space on TV and instead seeing them blow up.
But we finally showed our technological oomph and found astronauts with the right stuff Wolfe talked about. They had brain power, muscle power, persevering determination, love of country, dedication to duty, attitudes that could not be swiveled into defeatism or retreat. They also had courage, and needed it. We were to learn that astronauts do get killed.
A moment of good cheer was in 1961 when Alan Shepard became the first American to make the up-close acquaintance of space, then we had Glenn’s orbits and there was much more before the biggest hurrah of them all. That was putting the first men on the moon in 1969, fulfilling a goal of President John F. Kennedy’s.
I was a reporter in Albany, N.Y., then and was sent out the rainy next day to do a batch of man-on-the-street interviews and remember writing a first paragraph about people having their heads above the clouds. They really did. The nation did. We felt amazing pride, as we absolutely should have.
We should also give a memory hug to Glenn. Heroes are as important in our lives as ideals. They give us inspiration and something to live up to. Not to recognize and embrace them is to dwell in the land of cynicism, and few things are more socially destructive.
More than a little of that is going around these days. There are those who devote their lives to finding fault with our founding fathers and just about everything else about us, summing up the American story as slavery, killing Indians and mistreating women. They forget the greatness that has overcome so much of the worst and reached to grand places.
The space story is part of our greatness. It has strengthened us, it has led to significant scientific discoveries, it gives us needed, daily information, it is the backbone of many of our communications systems, it has led to improved education, and has even gifted us with microwave ovens.
It has also inspirited us, and so thanks to those who gave us this story, not least of all John Glenn.
<em>Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Send comments to [email protected].</em>
