[amsat-bb] God speed, John Glenn

[Joseph Armbruster]

I am a child of the 80s, was born in 81 and I use to watch all of the
launches I could on TV.  I was in south Florida and I remember staring
up at the sky hoping to catch any glimpse of a launch.  Mom worked
days and nights and we didn't travel much at all, so it was near
impossible for us to drive up and watch a launch.  Back then, you use
to be able to send a snail-mail letter to nasa and request the STS-*
launch photos (and others).  I did this for everyone that I could and
started requesting some of the older ones to fill up my notebook.
This was a huge deal for me back then and it took a lot of work and
time to do, it cost me all of my allowance at the time because of all
the envelopes and stamps.  Once you received the photos, you could
send them back to different addresses to request a signature of a
given astronaut in the picture.  This was a lot more work, you had to
figure out which place to send the photo to for a given astronaut,
hope they were there to sign it, wait... wait...... wait... and one
day voila, a manila envelope would appear in the mail.  I remember,
there was nothing more exciting than getting a NASA envelope in the
mail, you have no clue, this was the ultimate excitement!  We all use
to gather around and see who it was from, I use to idolize these
astronauts...

And then one day, I received a letter from John Glenn, indicating that
he would not sign a photo unless I sent him a check.  I will Never
forget this day.  I showed this to my family and they could not
believe it.  I think my mom even called or wrote a letter to NASA and
complained about it but I may be wrong (going to call and ask her
about it tonight).  Of the dozens of astronaut clips and photos that I
have, he was the only astronaut that demanded a check for his
autograph and it left a really bad scar on me.  Maybe it's silly but I
really felt betrayed as a kid.

Oh well, Bygons.

Joe


On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Alan <wa4sca at gmail.com> wrote:
> John Glenn passed away today at 95.
>
> 73s,
>
> Alan
> WA4SCA
>
>
>
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