John Glenn, a former Astronaut and US Senator, died last Thursday, December 8th, at the age of 95. In many ways Glenn’s incredible life defined the American Dream.

Born and raised in rural Ohio, John Glenn dropped out of college in 1942 to become a pilot for the US Marine Corps. Glenn served as a fighter pilot in the Pacific, and won two Distinguished Flying Crosses during the Second World War. After the war ended in 1945, Glenn bravely refused to go back to college, and continued his career as a pilot in the military.

Glenn transferred to the Navy in 1948 and became a training pilot at a Navy Base in Corpus Christi. When the Korean War began in 1950, Glenn again answered his country’s call, and saw active duty throughout the Korean War, flying 90 combat missions and winning numerous medals.

After the Korean War, John Glenn chose to become a test pilot, and, in 1957, he made the first transcontinental supersonic flight. By the late 1950’s, Glenn had become one of America’s most skilled pilots, and, in 1959, he was selected to join NASA’s Project Mercury as one of America’s first Astronauts. After rigorous training, NASA selected Glenn to pilot the solo Mercury-Atlas 6 mission and become the first American to orbit the Earth.

The Mercury-Atlas 6 mission took off from Cape Carnival on February 20th, 1962, and the world watched as Glenn successfully orbited the Earth three times. After the flight Glenn quickly became a hero, and he resigned from NASA in 1964 to run for the US Senate in Ohio.

Glenn’s first race was stopped when he was forced to resign after suffering a concussion, but he kept his eye on the Senate and ran again in 1970, when he lost the Democratic primary to the incumbent Senator by a slim margin. Faced with another loss, Glenn refused to give up his dream, running again in 1974 when he was finally elected to the US Senate, where he campaigned for more research into space and more federal support of NASA.

Glenn would go on to serve over 24 years in the US Senate, and had a remarkably clean career, with only one major scandal occurring in 1989 and the charges against him were eventually dropped. After Glenn announced his intent to retire from the Senate, he asked NASA to send him back into space one more time in order to test the effects of space upon the elderly, and NASA reluctantly agreed to allow him to go to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery if he could still pass NASA’s demanding physical tests.

John Glenn, now 77, again overcame the odds when he successfully passed NASA’s extreme physical tests, and on October 29th, 1998 he became the oldest person to ever go into space.

After retiring from his career in space a second time, Glenn retired to his native Ohio, where he continued to campaign for more American research into space and science for the remainder of his life.