Officials plan Glenn’s memorial, viewing

Staff/wire report

The panel that oversees the Ohio Statehouse and surrounding grounds has scheduled a special meeting Monday to sign off on the plans for astronaut and former Sen. John Glenn to lie in state in the building’s rotunda.

The Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board called the session for 9:30 a.m. Laura Clemens, the CSRAB executive director, confirmed the discussion will focus on Glenn, who died Thursday at age 95.

He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., but memorial services are being planned in Columbus. Details have not yet been released.

State administrative code allows the bodies of deceased Ohio governors, current and former House speakers and Senate presidents, current members of the legislature and statewide officeholders to lie in the Statehouse.

The public viewing at the Statehouse and a memorial service at Ohio State University’s Mershon Auditorium are planned for late next week.

The dates and times were being worked out Friday, said Hank Wilson, of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs.

Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, in 1962, and was the oldest man in space, at age 77 in 1998. A U.S. Marine and combat pilot, he also served as a Democratic U.S. senator, representing Ohio, for more than two decades.

Democratic President Barack Obama on Friday ordered flags at federal buildings and on ships around the world flown at half-staff until sunset on the day of Glenn’s internment.

Tributes from the nation’s leaders and others continued Friday.

“Throughout his life, Senator John Glenn embodied the right stuff,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement. “Our military in particular benefited from his courage and dedication. ... But just as important as what John Glenn accomplished is how he accomplished it: with a combination of fierce determination and profound humility, and always with integrity.”

Glenn was a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea and served on the Senate Armed Services Committee, among other Washington service.

In his hometown of New Concord, the John and Annie Glenn Museum, usually available this time of year only for special tours and events, opened Friday with free admission.

Char Lyn Grujoski, of Connersville, Ind., stopped in after spotting a roadside sign for the museum while driving home from Pittsburgh and listening to a radio report on Glenn.

The museum is in the astronaut’s converted boyhood home. Grujoski and her daughter left impressed.

Glenn was known for his humility, said Hal Burlingame, who grew up in New Concord and was friends with Glenn for half a century.

“John Glenn that you see is the real John Glenn,” Burlingame said. “He would be the same John Glenn if he happened to be sitting here today talking with us. He never took himself too seriously.”

Glenn was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge and grew up in nearby New Concord. He wed his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor, in 1943. The couple spent their later years between Washington and Columbus.

“For generations, Americans cheered John Glenn as he soared into the heavens,” former House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican and fellow Ohioan, said in a statement. “Now he has taken his place there for eternity, a well-earned reward for an American life well and heroically lived.”