The Last of the Heroes Who Gave Names to a Carmel Development, Dead at 95

CARMEL, NY — It was in 1968 that the developer of West Branch Acres named three streets after favorite Americans: Col. John Glenn, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and Barry Goldwater.

The streets are still there — but the last of the trio is now gone.

Glenn, a World War II pilot and the first American to orbit the earth in 1962, died Thursday at the age of 95.

The second famous American in the Putnam County development, MacArthur is best known for his command of Allied forces in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Born in 1880, the general died in 1964.

Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona in 1909 when it was still a territory. Also a World War II pilot in the Pacific, he was a long-serving U.S. Senator, known for his integrity and fiscal conservatism. He died in 1998.

Glenn stepped onto the world stage in 1962 with his astonishing feat. Prior to that, space travel had been thought by the masses to be an impossible dream fueled by arrogance, foolishness or both.

He died the day after the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the attack that inspired him to become a pilot. In the Marines, he flew 59 combat missions in World War II, according to the John and Annie Glenn Museum. When the Korean War broke out, Glenn logged another 63 missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross six times.

So skilled was he in a cockpit, Glenn began training other pilots. He even broke a speed record when he flew from Los Angeles to New York in just three and a half hours in 1957. His record-breaking heroics helped secure him a place in America's budding space program, and in 1959 he was selected as one of the first seven astronauts for NASA's space exploration program. Together, these men were known as the Mercury Seven.

In the midst of the Space Race, which pitted American scientists against Soviet Union scientists, the United States was worried it was ceding the great expanse surrounding Earth to its rival. America was desperate to send a man into space and have him orbit the planet. Enter John Glenn.

Glenn went from man to American hero on Feb. 20, 1962, when he piloted his spaceship the "Friendship 7" into space and orbited Earth three times. Glenn was the third American to enter space but the first to circle the planet.

As NASA notes, the trip was no walk in the park. Following the first successful orbit, a yaw attitude jet clogged. That meant Glenn had to abandon autopilot mechanisms and utilize the manual electrical fly-by-wire system. He traveled at speeds of 17,000 miles per hour. His three trips around the globe took four hours and 56 minutes.

His pioneering trip around Earth ended with the Friendship 7 splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, near Bermuda. Glenn was recovered by American forces and was later awarded the Space Congressional Medal of Honor by President John F. Kennedy. New York City threw a ticker tape parade to honor his accomplishments.

Glenn then served as an adviser to NASA until 1965 when he retired as a colonel and, encouraged by Bobby Kennedy, turned his attention to politics. To the next generation he was known as a U.S. senator; he represented his native state of Ohio from 1974 to 1999.

By Chris Mosby and Lanning Taliaferro (Patch Staff)