MINUTE BY MINUTE STORY OF THE FLIGHT

by JOHN GLENN

I knew that the pilot of a successful orbital mission was going to get a lot of attention. But I could not possibly have been prepared for the events of the past two weeks. It has seemed to me that this national accomplishment brought off by a great group of dedicated people has stirred the national pride. As the focus of that pride, I have been almost overwhelmed. I felt this way when I was honored by President Kennedy and by the Congress. But I have felt it even more strongly when I was honored by so ma ny other people. Riding along parade routes in Florida, Washington, New York and New Concord, my home town, I have looked at all those faces and waved and smiled when I really felt much more. Here they were, identifying with me, and I was identifying with them - right back.

I was not thinking about the possible reaction to the flight, however, as I went to work preparing for it. As the weeks of delays went by it must have begun to look as if I never was going to take that ride. First bad weather, then trouble with the booste r, then more bad weather. There's no doubt that a lot of people were frustrated and disappointed by the postponements. I was most concerned about the 20,000 people directly involved with the program, the launching crews, the men in the recovery fleet, the technicians standing by at tracking stations all around the world and all of the Mercury group at Cape Canaveral. I think people normally build up to a peak when they are getting ready for an event as complicated as this. And here we had a situation wher e we kept building up psychologically and nothing happened. It was like crying "Wolf!" over and over again.

But I needn't have worried at all. These people kept working and preparing and lost none of their sharpness. As for me, I was as disappointed as anyone by the delays, but they may even have been blessings in disguise. For such a mission I don't believe a pilot could ever reach the point when he could say to himself: "There's not one thing I don't know about this job. I can do everything perfectly." Readiness is relative, and I just used the extra time to get more ready. I continued to study and to work ou t in the simulation trainers. I practiced particularly hard at hand-controlling the capsule. As it happened, this extra homework was very useful.

It seems that a lot of people around the country were worried about the way I'd stand up during the long period of waiting. One psychiatrist ventured his opinion publicly that it would be impossible for me not to be suffering under the emotional strain. W ell, if I was suffering I wasn't aware of it and neither were the psychiatrists whose job it was to keep track of my emotions. The nearest I came to getting upset was after I visited a friend's house for a home-cooked meal and a quiet evening with his fam ily. A couple of days later it turned out that the friend's children had the mumps. As far as I could remember, I'd never had them.