For John Glenn, a Rare Repeat Tour of the Canyon of Heroes
It is March 1, 1962. There is bright sunshine across Lower Manhattan, and a crowd is building. New Yorkers still love a parade. The ritual of throwing blizzards of ticker tape from the windows of stock brokerages has become a cherished tradition. People are lining the sidewalks of Broadway, two deep, then four deep, then six deep. And they keep arriving.
They are waiting to see the most famous man in America that day. They are waiting to see Buck Rogers.
As many as four million people turned out that morning to celebrate Lt. Col. John H. Glenn Jr., who had become the first American to orbit the Earth only nine days earlier. For a nation rattled by the Soviet Union’s advances in space, including putting a man in orbit the year before, the Ohioan radiated the can-do attitude, frontier spirit and gusty valor that characterized the best of his countrymen.
It is Nov. 16, 1998. There are overcast skies above New York City, and a crowd is building to see Glenn again. At 77, he had just returned to space once more, this time as a beloved former astronaut — and a United States senator — on a mission aboard the space shuttle Discovery. But ticker-tape parades are not what they once were. Their numbers have dwindled, from several a year in the 1950s and ’60s to only the occasional procession. In the previous seven years, only baseball and hockey players have been so honored.
Glenn’s is the third in a month, a relative onslaught under a suddenly parade-happy Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. (It followed ones for the Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa and the world champion New York Yankees.) Some are complaining about overtime for the police and the street cleaners. But others want to see Buck Rogers again.
For Glenn, who died on Thursday at the age of 95, the two tours along the Canyon of Heroes were a dual distinction reserved for a select few. Amelia Earhart got two. So did Dwight D. Eisenhower. The explorer Rear Adm. Richard E. Byrd got three, the most of anyone.
As the parades have ebbed, so have the crowds: Glenn and his fellow astronauts drew only tens of thousands of people in 1998, far lower than the 500,000 expected.
“New York has historically prided itself on the Canyon of Heroes, but perhaps we have more cynicism today about heroes, just as we do about most every institution in society,” said John Mollenkopf, a professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center at City College of New York.
But that 1962 parade — boy, it was a sight to behold. The outpouring of affection for Glenn was so great that the festivities were largely undeterred by an unfolding tragedy in the city. American Airlines Flight 1 had taken off that morning from Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) and crashed in Jamaica Bay, killing all 87 passengers and eight crew members. It was the deadliest commercial airline crash in United States history at that point, and it was later memorialized in an episode of “Mad Men” — the father of the character Pete Campbell was said to have died onboard.
While city officials took action, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. was still on hand to introduce Glenn, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and others.
Glenn, handsome and humble, kept the focus on the spirit of the day.
“We truly feel we are representing all of you,” he told a luncheon of 2,000 at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that day. “And we hope that in the future, we can represent you in ever more ambitious endeavors.”
The space program would reach the moon seven years later. There were more sunny days for America, and more overcast ones, but Glenn remained a beacon of hope throughout. Even if less ticker tape fell in 1998, he was much the same man in both motorcades — with his glowing wife, Annie, by his side each time, with his hand flashing a thumbs-up and with a smile as wide as a canyon.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/astronaut-john-glenn-death-nyc-parades-broadway.html?_r=0
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