February 2, 1962

A MAN MARKED TO DO GREAT THINGS


A LOOK HOMEWARD. Photographs from the collection of Anna Castor and John Glenn illuminate their eary life in New Concord, Ohio where they both grew up. The snapshots show Annie and John sprawled on the Castor lawn when they were "steadies" in high school: Johnny as a naval aviation cadet; and in the Castor garden after their April wedding in 1943, with Johnny in Marine dress blues.



SNOWBALLER. A black-legginged Johnny, mufflered up to his mouth, flashed a 6-year-old's gleeful smile as he craddled an imperfectly fashioned snowball in his arms for a snapshot taken out in the family yard during the winter of 1927.

SCHOOLBOY. Looking untypically glum, a scholarly Johhny stood for his first class portrait between fellow schoolmates Rex Hoon and Carol Evilsizer-now Mrs Ernest Wright and a fifth grade teacher at a New Concord school.

TEAM MAN. Agressive lineman John Glenn Jr. sat front row center for his football squad picture in his senior year. He won his letter in football, basketball and tennis.

KATCHY KOME-ON. The hustling youngster proved a first-rate huckster with this ad in the weekly Enterprise. At another time he also sold rhubarb from his mother's garden.

SCRAWL TO REMEMBER. This football banquet program from Annie's high school scrapbook was sweepingly inscribed by her steady date: "To you, 'Squirt,' Johnny G."

SENIOR STAR. Johnny (seated on chair arm) played the male lead in Fanny and the Servant Problem in May, 1939. The production's cast was limited to honor students.

COCKY CADET. Erect and faintly chubby in his khakis, Naval Aviation Cadet John Glenn stood at parade rest for this photograph from Annie's album, taken in 1942 during his preflight training at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

WEDDING PORTRAIT. Proudly wearing his new Marine pilot wings, Johnny rushed back to New Concord to marry Annie before reporting for more training in California. He arrived for the ceremonies 15 minutes late-grinning broadly.

BEGINNINGS, WINGS-AND HOW COULD HE MISS, WITH ANNIE ?
If New Concord, a small town in the hilly part of southeast Ohio, feels any awe at the fame of Liet. Colonel John H. Glenn Jr. USMC, it has no reason to. Glenn, the Astronaut who is New Concord's most illustrious son, is a product of the town's making. New Concord nurtured him in its schools, shaded him on its tree-lined streets and shaped his character with its disciplined Presbyterianism. It knows exactly how strong John Glenn has always been, and his present stature, his fame and his role has come as no surprise.
John Glenn always showed and indefatiagable flair for competition and leadership. When the football team needed sure yardage for a first down, the play invariably was run through young Glenn's position at center. He was interlocutor in a minstrel show, president of the junior class, member of the choir, lead in the senior play and lifeguard at the summer Hi-Y camp. Once he had talked his parents into letting him try some Navy-sponsored civilain flying, he was among the first in his group to solo. While all this was going on, no one else dated Annie Castor; she was Johnny's girl.
In different surrounding, such headlong drive to excel might have burned out in frustration or become insufferable. But young Glenn's amiability and faith kept pace with his ambition. The sober, freckled face of the spaceman is still that of the engaging boy who married the local dentist's daughter and left to become a Marine air ace. New Concord's quiet pride is reflected in the signs at its city limit, and in the words of Mayor "K.T. Taylor: "We mention Johnny in our prayers,"

TWIN GRINS. "All the other girls liked Johnny," recalls one of Glenn's classmates. "but he had eyes only for Annie from the beginning." The cheery photo below was taken in a concession booth when John and Annie, both liberally spattered with freckles, were teenagers and already virtually inseparable.


HONEYMOONERS. In 1943 John and Annie Glenn stood in the California surf. John was assigned to fighters at a nearby naval air station. The next year he was sent to the Marshall Islands.

FIRST CHILD. John, Annie, and young David sat for a portrait before Glenn went to China. During two wars there were many separations. "It broke my heart when I said goodby," says Annie.

MEDAL WINNER. In the Central Pacific during 1944, 1st Lieutenant John Glenn began a career that won him a total of five Distinguished Service Flying Crosses and an Air Medal with 18 clusters.

CLOSE SHAVES, MEDALS, MIGS, MANY GOODBYS

THE FOLKS BACK HOME. Glenn's parents posed with Annie and (back row) Billy Pinkston Glenn's nephew, Lyn and David for a family portrait to sent to John while he served in Korea.

CORSAIRS OVER CHINA. Glenn (foreground) flew F4Us in the Far East. "I've never seen a better flyer," said a fellow pilot. "He could fly alongside you and tap a wingtip gently against yours."

OFF TO KOREA. In 1953, John again had to say goodby to Annie, David and now Lyn. He flew bombing and strafing missions, then went north to "MiG Alley" and downed three MiGs.

SHOT UP PLANE. Glenn was smiling after he returned from a Korean mission with 375 holes in his plane. Crew members called the plane "the flying doily" and were hard put to keep it patched.

MOCK DOGFIGHT. Home form Korea, War Ace Glenn cavorted with Lyn and David in the Castor living room at New Concord. Major Glenn held a model of a Sabre jet fighter for a mock dogfight with a MiG model held by David, a copy of Communist planes he had shot down in MiG Alley.
THE DRIVE TO A DREAM AND FAME
In earlier years when John came flying home as a Marine ace, his visits to New Concord were signaled with a roar of a piston-driven plane busiing the town. In 1957, when he flew over in a F8U-1 jet on a record-breaking cross-country flight, the boom was so thunderous that at least one New Concordite thought the favorite son had dropped a bomb. After his triumph. Major Glenn returned for a jubilant civic celebration. His school, Muskingum College, presented him with its first "distringuished merit award." Last spring another honor was added: Glenn now an Astronaut received an honorary doctorate of science. Betting on Glenn's success in space, New Concord's mayor has asked Project Mercury officials how soon the town might get its spaceman home for a post-orbital shindig.
Among his townspeople, conditioned over the years to the idea of Johnny's invincibility, there was real shock when he was not picked for the first suborbital space flights-a shock shared by Glenn himself. "He was real, real shook," recalls a hight school friend. "It was the only thing Johnny ever lost in his life. But he got over it . . .I think they had him in mind for this one all along."
"I never saw anybody who wants as much as this man wants," says Dr. Glenn L. McConagha, president-elect of Muskingum and Glenn's personal friend. "Yet he will always spend time whith anyone who wants time with him. If anything should go wrong for him, I don't thinks this town would ever come out of it."

FAMILY IDYL. Johnny and daughter Lyn , now 14 hunker down for a close look at an anthill as Annie and David, 16 look on during a weekend visit to Cape Canaveral early in January, shortly before the Astronaut went into seclusion to get ready for the unsuccessful first attempt to put him into orbit.

HOME-TOWN HERO. In dress whites and battle decorations, Glenn grinningly obliged young autograph hunters at his 1957 homecoming.

VIGIL AT HOME BY THE FIRE

PROUD PARENTS. Seemingly as at peace as any elderly couple at home resting before the hearth, John's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. John Herschel Glenn Sr., wait out in Concord their son's unfinished countdown. His picture stands in a bookcase at left and a model of the missile that will take him into space is on the mantel. As they waited for the biggest moment of their lives, Clara Glenn fretted over her husbands health, then walked to a window and looked out at a persistent rain. Her composure slackened and she whispered, "Oh, I do hope it goes off Saturday." "I'll be he's as cool as a cucumber," her husband said, then added somberly, "but it's bound to be hard on him." When the shot was postponed, John's parents continued waiting.