 John Glenn passed away today, December 8, 2016, at 95 years old. Like all the astronauts of the vintage era, I've thought a lot about their legacy and what losing them means. It's a very strange job hazard that you'll eventually have to write something touching about personal heroes you've never met. Glenn's has always been one I couldn't put my finger on, and now I have to. He earned a science degree in engineering in 1942 and joined the US Marine Corps the following year. He served for one year with the Marine Flying Squadron 155 during the Second World War, then post-war served as a flight instructor before serving in Korea with the Air Force. Throughout the 1950s, he advanced his career. He set a record for cross-country supersonic flight, trained at the Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, and captured hearts of Americans nationwide when he appeared on the game show Named That Tune alongside child star Eddie Hodges. And the public's admiration only grew when he was introduced as one of the nation's Mercury astronauts at a press conference on April 9, 1959. The lone Marine, he was the most outspoken of the group, as evidenced by his answer to the question of which test leading to his astronaut selection was the hardest. I think the test out at Dr. Lovelace's place at Albuquerque out there, certainly some of the tests we had out there were the most trying, and it's rather difficult to pick one because if you figure how many openings there are on the human body and how far you can go in any one of them, you gave it away. Now you answer which one would be the toughest for you. He also spoke of his wife Annie's support of his decision to fly in space. I don't think any of us could really go on with something like this. We didn't have pretty good backing at home, really. On my wife's attitude toward this has been the same as it has been all along through all my flying, that if it's what I want to do and she's behind it and the kids are to a hundred percent. Lawned with boyish good looks, despite being the oldest of the group at 37, Glenn, the veteran of two wars, captured so much of what America needed in a hero in the 1960s. He was, to paraphrase Tom Wolf, Mr. Clean Marine. Of the Mercury astronauts, he was a faithful and pious husband and father and a proud American whose young adult life was marked with public servitude. He was instantly the media's favorite for the first American in space, but he didn't win the same favor with his peers. Though a test pilot, Glenn didn't share the other astronauts' willingness to participate in the quote-unquote rockstar-like fame they experienced, a fame that included girls. Sadly for Glenn, physically fit as he was and competent in a cockpit, he couldn't win a popularity contest. His peers didn't vote for him to be the first in space. He would be third. In the meantime, he would have to serve as backup to Al Shepard and Gus Grissom, the astronauts who would fly first and second. But history ultimately smiled on the Marine. It just so happened that the Atlas was ready enough with a roughly 51% success rate by the time his flight came around. Glenn climbed on that in-skinned missile and became the first American in orbit. He got the flight of his dreams and a national hero's status followed. That's the Glenn that I deal with in my work and the Glenn that most people remember. He was, really, the archetypal astronaut of the 1960s, one we sort of hate today because he's indicative of such a small swath of the American public. But if we take Glenn in his era, he was really the hero America needed in 1959. He loved his wife and family, he was a devoted public servant, and was brave enough to be the first person to sit atop an Atlas missile and ride it into space at a time when, well, things trying to get into space tended to explode a whole lot. And it's really his formidable character that stands out as Glenn's legacy. After retiring from NASA, he entered politics, ultimately becoming a U.S. senator in his home state of Ohio in 1974, still serving the public. In 1998, he rejoined NASA's astronaut corps and flew on STS-95, becoming the oldest person to fly in space at 77, yielding data on what spaceflight does to the elderly, which is still kind of a public service, albeit the funnest kind. Glenn gave his life to his country. He was a figurehead when America needed a hero to pin its hopes on and a public servant his entire life. And though I never met him, everyone I know who has describes him as just a phenomenal human being. With Glenn's death, we've lost not only a unique historical figure, but the last of a type of American hero whose status has persisted with pop culture references. You don't need to be a space nut to know who John Glenn is. Schools bear his name. A NASA center bears his name. He's even been referenced in cartoons like American Dad. The model astronaut Glenn embodied may be old-fashioned and, well, not something Americans or anyone wants to see anymore, but that can't take away from his legacy the impression he's had on generations and more than anything, the fact that he was an American hero who was also just a really good human.