On Dec. 8, as I sat in front of my computer drinking coffee and trying not to think about the lake effect snow falling outside, a window opened up on my computer screen with the sad news that Sen. John Glenn died.
I was 15 years old when he orbited the earth in 1962.
John Glenn was known to a few select people before that mission, but afterward everybody knew about our American hero. He looked like a hero. He acted like a hero.
There was no swagger, no boasting and no conceit in the man. He did have a biography that cried out for a movie to be made, and a smile that melted female hearts everywhere. Boys had their hair cut high and tight just like John Glenn.
Inevitably, he went into politics.
I suppose he did not have the acting skills that Audie Murphy had, although I saw him in an episode of “Frasier” that was hilarious. Glenn played himself where he gave an interview at the Seattle radio station. Technical mistakes and preoccupied humans allowed the interview to go ahead with just Glenn speaking into the microphone with no recording and no human overhearing his monologue.
The TV viewer got to see Glenn talk about the alien spaceship that he saw while in orbit. When the session was over, John Glenn learned that it was not recorded — he just shrugged. Wow!
John Glenn, unlike Audie Murphy, was not meant to entertain us. Instead, he inspired us. He enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor and became a fighter pilot. After the war, he stayed in the service and flew again during the Korean War.
He became a test pilot, a job that is only offered to the best pilots. Finally, he became one of the first astronauts, which is when we all were introduced to him.
John Glenn served in the Senate. I seldom agreed with him because he was a Democrat.
On the other hand, I always respected him. He served with distinction and even ran for president. It was not to be.
Then he did something completely unexpected. He signed on for another space flight, this time at the age of 77. NASA could not have found a better candidate to learn how an elderly man would react in space. At an age when most men are forming a perfect impression of their backside in a piece of living room furniture, John Glenn rocketed into space to serve his country one more time.
Most of us were not born when John Glenn restored American faith in our technology.
There were many Soviet triumphs in the years preceding his flight beginning when the Soviets launched Sputnik. It was shocking to the most prosperous country on the earth that the Soviet Union had a machine orbiting us and we could not match them. The Soviets launched animals in bigger and bigger payloads until Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth.
Finally, John Glenn made his flight and we were able to boast a little. We forget that from John Glenn’s three successful orbits until Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man” on the moon was only seven years.
For that and many more things, I am proud to be an American. God speed, John Glenn.

Michael Waldron is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, who was born and raised in Niles. He previously served on the Niles Community School Board of Education. He can be reached at ml.waldron@sbcglobal.net.