_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [32]
“Friendship Seven, this is Mercury Control. How do you read? Over.”
As instantly as they had come, the ions were gone, and the words penetrated Friendship Seven like the voice of an angel.
Glenn’s reply was a simple mike check. “Loud and clear. How me?”
“Roger,” a grinning Shepard acknowledged. “Reading you loud and clear. How’re you doing?”
“Oh, pretty good,” Glenn said, “but that was a real fireball, boy!”
Mercury Control broke out in cheers and handshakes, and Harrington broke out with the Notre Dame fight song.
There was dancing in the aisles, but flight director Kraft yelled through the pandemonium: “Knock it off. We’ve got a pilot to land.”
Instantly, the celebration ended, and John Glenn’s team was back on the job.
He and Friendship Seven kept losing speed. The Mercury capsule was now oscillating strongly from side to side, rocking badly enough for Glenn to feed corrections with his thrusters. They weren’t much good anymore in the thickening atmosphere.
In the rain, John Glenn and family rode with Vice President Lyndon Johnson in his Washington parade. Only hours later, Glenn and the vice president had moved on to New York City. They are seen here moving down the canyons of Broadway in an overwhelming ticker-tape parade. (NASA).
“What’s this?” he muttered to himself, reaching for the switch to override his automatics and deploy the drogue chute early. He was at 55,000 feet and stabilization was important.
From that point on, Friendship Seven had a perfect splashdown. The first American to orbit Earth dropped into the water near his recovery ship, Noa.
John Glenn arrived in the nation’s capital a hero of Charles Lindbergh’s stature. He had lassoed the Russian lead, and the White House gave him a parade. A quarter of a million people braved heavy rain to watch the astronaut pass. He was then jetted off to New York City, where four million screaming, cheering people greeted him with a tumultuous ovation and a ticker-tape parade.
When John Glenn had satisfied all his national appearances, he came home for a parade through Cocoa Beach and a first-hand inspection by President John F. Kennedy of his Mercury spacecraft, Friendship Seven. (Rusty Fischer & Hartwell Conklin Collections).
I joined veteran broadcaster Robert McCormick in NBC’s Radio Central at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. We broadcast the parade from start to finish, and for this farm boy’s first trip to the big city, about the only thing I felt akin to was Chet Huntley’s roll-top desk.
The next morning NBC got me out of bed to cover an award for Glenn at the famed Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
I stopped by the coffee shop for breakfast and was introduced to food in the big city. The menu said two eggs anyway you liked them. That’s what I ordered and that’s what I got—two eggs. No toast, no coffee, no jam—no anything except two eggs.
In Cocoa Beach in 1962 you received two eggs, sausage or bacon, potatoes or grits, toast, coffee, and orange juice for $1.75. You can image how pleased I was when they brought me a check for $5.75 for my two eggs and a glass of warm water.
I paid the bill and took the elevator to witness John Glenn’s award. He was happy to see a face from home.
“Any beach sand in there?” he smiled, shaking my trousers’ cuffs.
“Some,” I laughed. “How’re you doing?”
“Tired,” he said, his expression suddenly weary. “I’m ready for a rest.”
“For a guy that shortened the distance to the moon, you’re entitled.”
Standing there, it came to me God didn’t turn out too many like John Glenn. When he passes, his epitaph should read:
HERE LIES A CIVILIZED MAN
SIX
On Orbit
The public had fallen in love with John Glenn, and NASA could not have been more pleased. The word went out: It’s a long way to the moon. Keep the astronauts in orbit, keep the public’s attention.
Deke Slayton did just that. He took the reins from Glenn and went to work. Wally Schirra was his backup. But soon we began to hear rumblings that Deke was in trouble. The rumor was that it was his heart.
In Washington, presidential science advisor Jerome