john glenn s second trip to space took off as planned in october of 1998. liftoff of discovery with the crew of six astronaut heroes and one american legend. when the mission was over, america s oldest space traveler was given his second ticker-tape parade on broadway in new york city. i would say he s one of the few legitimate american heroes of our time. i think people think at my age i m supposed to be a couch potato. you need to get out and fulfill your dreams and ambitions at any arj. reporter: following his return to space, he and wife annie founded the john glenn institute for public service at ohio state university. they also served as trustees of their alma mater, muss keying gum college. john scott, fox news. and that s just a sampling of some of the things he
at launching john before he actually went up was under way and weather was a real problem and they were going to have to cancel the mission and it was very anxious whether or not he was going to go. the vice president was done in houston and wanted to drop in on annie glenn to speak with her and frankly to get on television, and he parked his vehicle a couple blocks away from their house and they kept calling. annie glenn kept saying no, i m not interested in having the vice president visit. it was a personal time. this happened several times until finally they called the vice president had nasa call down to the cape to john and tell them that annie wasn t cooperating and could he help out. john said absolutely not. annie doesn t want the vice president, he s not going to go there. she was the boss on that one. absolutely. let s bring in tom jones who
few words in honor of our esteemed friend and colleague. there are those here today who have known senator glenn for 60, 70, even 90 years. most of us knew him long before we actually met him. we knew him through news reports and flickering events among those so spectacular. the suspense of the countdown, the majesty of the liftoff, the technical brilliance. our nation was proud of the achievement and proud of our brave and dashing hero. more than that, we cared about him personally. we prayed for him personally, for his family, for his happiness and his safety. the mission captured our minds, but john glenn won our hearts. there were many reasons for that. foremost among them was the quality of john glenn the man, a
i wish i had been on john s crew. i was not. a lot of my colleagues flew with him on that space shuttle discovery mission and understood him as a human being. what was so nice is when you have a crew member that slips in at the last moment, sometimes that can disrupt the comradery, the crew coordination needed for a mission. here comes john glenn, moving onto a crew that s already been together for a year or year and a half. yet it was seamless, because of his experience, his humility. he slipped right into that crew and anything the other astronauts on the crew wanted him to do to relieve them of more critical duties on board he was ready to do, whether it was clean the cabin at the end of the day or go check on one of the science experiments there. there was no job on the space shuttle that was too unimportant for john glenn to take on. that kind of attitude made him fit seamlessly into the crew. wonderful reflections indeed. gentlemen, stand by. services are beginning. let s l
he asked the boss at johnson for his next ride and never got an answer. he couldn t get a flight assignment. i think after some disappointment and hesitation he decided to put his chips into the political world and pursue a chip there. he had a bathroom accident that knocked him out of his first campaign with a hospitalization. it wasn t until 7 that he became a senator. it was great to have a guy in the senate who new space policy backwards and forwards. he was a great advocate for human space exploration. i think that s where his value was most appreciated by all the astronauts. rusty, let me ask you about the training for that mission when he was a much older man. did he say it was particularly difficult for him to go through that rigorous training before he went up in space? uma, i can t speak to that directly but tom can. perhaps, tom, you can fill in the training for his second mission.