Add to that unflagging devotion to a wife he has known since childhood and unerring service to his country. His life story of striving hard, succeeding, suffering setbacks and high-flying redemption was as American as it gets.
What made John Glenn was more his persona: He was a combat veteran with boy next door looks, a strong marriage and nerves of steel. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, a war hero fighter pilot, a record-setting test pilot, a longtime senator, a presidential candidate and a man who defied age and gravity to go back into space at 77.īut those were just his accomplishments. Glenn was the ultimate all-American hero. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalised for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. William B.JOHN Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the US Senate, has died aged 95.He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Rebecca - a civil rights attorney - and their two children.
#John glenn first man on the moon tv#
Jeff publishes widely under his own byline and provides frequent commentary on TV and radio. He has taught presidential history at Princeton University, where he was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies, and at the University of California Washington Center. His comic strip, Thatch, was nationally syndicated from 1994-1998, when it appeared daily in more than 150 newspapers. He is a member of the Society of American Historians. He also helped lead the President’s team of humor writers - a team that produced the acclaimed short film The Final Days.Ī Rhodes Scholar, Jeff received his master’s in history from Oxford University in 1993 and graduated from Brown University with highest honors in 1991. He covered a range of issues from economic policy to international development, technological innovation, and the arts. He played a leading role in drafting two State of the Union Addresses, the President’s 2000 Democratic National Convention speech, and the Farewell Address, among hundreds of other speeches. During his three years at the White House, Jeff became the deputy chief speechwriter and a member of the senior staff. In 1997, President Bill Clinton read Mutual Contempt and invited Jeff to become one of his speechwriters. Shesol does an authoritative job of giving us a vivid, almost novelistic sense of both of his protagonists, while at the same time situating their political stands within a historical context.” called Mutual Contempt “the most gripping political book of recent years.” In The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani described the book as “riveting. Jeff’s previous book, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud that Defined a Decade, was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. deeply researched and beautifully written.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described Supreme Power as “stunning,” the kind of book that comes “once in a generation,” and The New York Times Book Review called it “riveting. The Supreme Court, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2010 and a Favorite Book of the Year by The New Yorker. Jeff Shesol is an author, historian, and an accidental speechwriter.Ī founding partner of West Wing Writers, Jeff is the author of Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. Glenn’s historic flight did not in itself win the space race, but it did shift the momentum by putting the United States on the path to the moon.ĭrawing on his new book, Mercury Rising, author Jeff Shesol will examine how the astronaut’s heroics helped restore the nation’s sense of self-belief in what Kennedy called the “hour of maximum danger.” Speaker: Jeff Shesol
Though other astronauts called him “the Boy Scout,” they saw his ambition, his drive, and his fierceness of purpose. When John Glenn blasted off aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, he carried America’s hopes into orbit-and into a new and perilous Cold War battleground. The military implications were clear: The United States needed to catch up. They had sent the first satellite into orbit, the first animal into orbit, and then, in 1961, the first man. Kennedy saw space exploration as a race for survival-a race that America was losing. At the height of the Cold War, President John F.