When ‘space hero’ John Glenn came to San Luis Obispo

John Glenn, who died Thursday, will be most remembered for being the first American to orbit the Earth, but many probably don’t remember the time he made a two-hour stop in San Luis Obispo.

It was May 18, 1968 — six years after Glenn’s historic orbit, but still six years away from him becoming a senator — and the 46-year-old former astronaut was in San Luis Obispo to campaign for Sen. Robert Kennedy in his bid for the presidency. (Kennedy was assassinated a little more than two weeks later, after winning the California primary.)

According to a Telegram-Tribune story at the time, Glenn “spoke to several thousand persons on Monterey Street from the balcony of Old Mission, and it was a low-key and partly nonpartisan affair.”

Reporter Gilbert Moore described Glenn as “still slim and boyish at 46.”

The “space hero” also sat down with the newspaper for an interview, giving his opinion on topics such as his support for Kennedy, what he considered to be regrettable cuts to the space program and the responsibility of Americans to participate in the political process.

He also discussed his own budding political career — four years earlier, Glenn had briefly run for the Senate before withdrawing because of a head injury, though he said he was considering a run again in the future.

“You can’t just always sit around memorializing a flight made way back in 1962,” he said.

Notable among his comments that day was one sentence on the topic of putting a man on the moon.

“Earlier, at the San Luis Obispo Airport,” Moore wrote, “he told the Telegram-Tribune that although the U.S. could still put a man on the moon late in 1969, it would be more realistic to expect this achievement later.” (Just over a year later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong — a fellow Ohioan — would be the first man to set foot on the moon.)

After his speech, Glenn was given a badge for La Fiesta de las Flores ’68, an annual San Luis Obispo parade, to which he joked, “Now that I’m an official official, I’ll urge all the committee members to get back to work because I might come back next year,” according to the report.

Glenn died Thursday at age 95 in Columbus, Ohio, at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, according to The Associated Press.

This story was originally published December 8, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "When ‘space hero’ John Glenn came to San Luis Obispo."