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Showing posts from December 14, 2016

JOHN GLENN, AMERICA'S FIRST SPACE HERO published in Lebanon newspaper 12/14/16

Another American hero has passed.  If you are in my age range, you probably feel like you grew up with our space program.  I’m not a soap opera fan but I remember a show called The Days of Our Lives and every time I read a news story about NASA and our astronauts, I think of how all the space events really were special days in our lives and how we remember where we were when those events happened. I was in Lebanon Junior High when every class had a discussion on October 5, 1957 as we first learned about Sputnik and I remember the day vividly, and the emotions expressed, especially by students much more interested in science than I was.   We were eating dinner at Munger Moss Restaurant the night of January 27, 1967, and the restaurant was unusually quiet and the atmosphere was solemn as we had all just heard about the fire aboard Apollo 1 which killed Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chafee I was on the road on my way to my Senate confirmation hearing in Jefferson Cit