Fighter pilot, astronaut and former US Senator John Glenn has passed away.
John Glenn launched his career from eastern Ohio. He quit college to enlist after Pearl Harbor, became a Navy pilot, and then a test pilot. That led him to the US's newly formed space agency, NASA, which sent him up as the first American in orbit around the earth in 1962.
He won election to the US Senate in 1974 and served for four terms. He ran for president in 1984 and was long considered a potential vice presidential candidate. Glenn’s last major public appearance in Ohio may have been when the airport in Columbus was renamed for him in July, where he talked about inspiring young people.
“They, in their time, can do as many new things as have been done in aviation and in flying in the past.”
In 1998, Glenn became the oldest person to fly in space, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. John Glenn was 95.
