HERO + REAL HEROES OF ENVIRONMENTALISM, POLITICS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE ARTS, PAST AND PRESENT

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SEE HOW FAR WE'VE COME

UNDERSTAND WHAT IS POSSIBLE IN THE FUTURE

A REAL AMERICAN HERO AND ROLE MODEL FOR THE WORLD SENATOR JOHN GLENN DIES AT 95

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the U.S. Senate, died Thursday. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts was 95.

John Herschel Glenn Jr. had two major career paths that often intersected: flying and politics, and he soared in both of them.

More than anything, Glenn was the ultimate and uniquely American space hero: a combat veteran with an easy smile, a strong marriage of 70 years and nerves of steel. Schools, a space center and the Columbus airport were named after him. So were children.

Before he gained fame orbiting the world, he was a fighter pilot in two wars, and as a test pilot, he set a transcontinental speed record. He later served 24 years in the Senate from Ohio. In 1984 he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination but was not nominated.

His long political career enabled him to return to space in the shuttle Discovery at age 77 in 1998, a cosmic victory lap that he relished and turned into a teachable moment about growing old. He holds the record for the oldest person in space.

The Soviet Union leaped ahead in space exploration by putting the Sputnik 1 satellite in orbit in 1957, and then launched the first man in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in a 108-minute orbital flight on April 12, 1961. it was up to Glenn to be the first American to orbit the Earth.

"Godspeed, John Glenn," fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter radioed just before Glenn thundered off a Cape Canaveral launch pad. At the time of that Feb. 20, 1962, flight, Glenn was 40 years old. With the all-business phrase, "Roger, the clock is operating, we're underway." During the flight, Glenn uttered a phrase that he would repeat frequently throughout life: "Zero G, and I feel fine."

Glenn said he was often asked if he was afraid, and he replied, "If you are talking about fear that overcomes what you are supposed to do, no.

Glenn, the green-eyed, telegenic Marine flew in dangerous skies. He was a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea who flew low, got his plane riddled with bullets, flew with baseball great Ted Williams. As a test pilot he broke aviation records.

In 1959, Glenn wrote in Life magazine: "Space travel is at the frontier of my profession. It is going to be accomplished, and I want to be in on it. There is also an element of simple duty involved. I am convinced that I have something to give this project."

That sense of duty was instilled at an early age. Glenn was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, and grew up in New Concord, Ohio. He joined the town band as a trumpeter at age 10. It formed my beliefs and my sense of responsibility. Everything that came after that just came naturally."

He became friends with President Kennedy and ally and friend of his brother, Robert. The Kennedys urged him to enter politics, and after a difficult few starts he did. Glenn spent 24 years in the U.S. Senate, representing Ohio longer than any other senator in the state's history. Glenn set a record in 1980 by winning re-election with a 1.6-million vote margin.

Glenn's returned to space in a long-awaited second flight in 1998 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. In a news conference from space, Glenn said "to look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible."

He became an expert on nuclear weaponry and was the Senate's most dogged advocate of non-proliferation. He was the leading supporter of the B-1 bomber when many in Congress doubted the need for it. As chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, he turned a microscope on waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy.

"I've been very fortunate to have a lot of great experiences in my life and I'm thankful for them," he said in 2012.

In 1943, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor. They met when they were toddlers.

"I don't remember the first time I told Annie I loved her, or the first time she told me," Glenn would write in his memoir. "It was just something we both knew." He bought her a diamond engagement ring in 1942 for $125. It's never been replaced.

He and his wife, Annie, served as trustees at their alma mater, Muskingum College. Glenn spent time promoting the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, which also houses an archive of his private papers and photographs.

They had two children, Carolyn and John David.

Associated Press Associated Press

SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

Online:

http://www.osu.edu/glenninstitute

http://johnglennhome.org/

John Glenn© Roberto Schmidt/Gety Images

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LOST A STORY WRITTEN ABOUT DUKE KAHANAMOKUWELL REWRITE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN THE MEANTIME THIS STORY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Here’s his New York Times obituary from Jan. 23, 1968, which dubs him "Hawaii’s best-known citizen."Duke Kahanamoku Dies at 77: Leading Swimmer of His Time Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimming star, whose international sports career spanned 20 years and who became Hawaii’s best-known citizen, died today at Kaiser Foundation Hospital

If you’re one of the billion or so people who use Google.com, you no doubt spotted the tribute to Duke Kahanamoku on what would have been his 125th birthday.Though many have forgotten him, Kahanamoku was one of the most accomplished athletes in American history, an Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder in swimming. He was also a surfer, movie actor and politician.

Here’s his New York Times obituary from Jan. 23, 1968, which dubs him "Hawaii’s best-known citizen."Duke Kahanamoku Dies at 77: Leading Swimmer of His Time Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimming star, whose international sports career spanned 20 years and who became Hawaii’s best-known citizen, died today at Kaiser Foundation Hospital. He was 77 years old.The Duke collapsed at the Waikiki Yacht Club and was rushed to the nearby hospital, where he died.Although he had suffered several heart attacks and had survived a brain operation, the Duke continued to swim and sail almost to the day of his death. He was Honolulu’s official greeter, a post he had held since 1961.

For 16 years he reigned as international swimming’s sprint champion, and in later years he also held an unbeatable record as a politician. For more than 20 years the Duke served as Sheriff of the City and County of Honolulu.although he was descended from a native chief – the Duke was one of the last of the full-blooded Hawaiians – his name was neither a title nor a nickname derived from his prowess in swimming.

He was named for his father, who, according to legend, was named after the Duke of Edinburgh, who visited Hawaii in 1869, the year the elder Kahanamoku was born.zzzzzzzzYoung Duke, the eldest of six brothers, was born Aug. 26, 1890, and was reared near the beach at Waikiki. He astounded the swimming world before the 1912 Olympics when he broke three records in a meet in Honolulu.

Mainland swimming officials refused to believe anyone could achieve such a feat, and he was brought to the United States to prove himself. In meets in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, he smashed established records in the 50-yard, 100-yard and 220-yard freestyle events. Later, he capped his first competitive year by winning the 100-meter event at the Olympics in Stockholm.

The Duke returned the title in Antwerp in 1920 and was a top contender in the sprints in the 1924 and 1928 games. In 1932 he was an alternate on the water polo team for the games in Los Angeles.

"I was 42 then," he later said. "You begin to slow down a little when you get around 40. That’s why I switched to water polo."

The Duke said in an interview a few years ago that most modern swimmers, except the Japanese, still used his flutter kick and overhead stroke.

"I started the flutter kick at Waikiki," he said. "I used to do a lot of surfboarding. I found I could propel one by kicking my feet. Later I used the flutter kick in swimming combined with an arm stroke with plenty of reach."

Itwas his flutter kick that replaced the scissors kick and revolutionized sprint swimming.Mr. Kahanamoku used his swimming and surfing to heroic advantage in several water rescues, not only when he was a beach boy in Hawaii before becoming a world-travelling champion, but also in later life.

In 1925, shortly after he began a movie career in Hollywood, he was camping on a beach with a party of actors and actresses when the yacht Thelma capsized off Newport Beach., Calif. The Duke made three trips through battering waves on his surfboard to aid in rescue operations. Seventeen persons lost their lives in the sinking, but 12 were rescued – 8 of them by the Duke.

Kahanamoku once said, "I played chiefs – Polynesian chiefs, Aztec chiefs, Indian chiefs, all kinds of chiefs." His last roles were in "wake of the Red Witch" and the movie version of "Mr. Roberts." In both, he played Polynesian chiefs.

Mr. Kahanamoku was well qualified, physically, for such roles. He had a majestic posture and bearing, standing 6 feet 3 inches tall. When he was young, his hair was jet black, but it grew snow white with the years and never thinned.

After seven years in Hollywood, to which he occasionally returned to take a movie role, the Duke ran for sheriff, in 1932, in Honolulu, as a Democrat. He was unopposed. Several years later he switched to the Republican party, but remained the most popular political figure in the island.

He acted as Honolulu’s unofficial greeter throughout his career as sheriff, until 1961, when he was appointed to a paid job as greeter of movie stars, politicians and royalty. In 1966 Mr. Kahanamoku taught the visiting Queen Mother Elizabeth of Britain how to do the hula.

The Duke continued to swim, although not in competition, until only a few years ago, when he began having heart trouble. He never actively trained swimmers, but could be depended on to give pointers to young men and women on how to improve their style. ZzzzzTo his own generation of Hawaiians, Duke Kahanamoku was sometimes looked upon as the personification of a prophecy of King Kamehameha, who in the late 19th century predicted the complete subjugation of the islands by the white man, but said that before the native Hawaiian race died out, one man would bring it fame.

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Babe Ruth, right, posed with Duke Kahanamoku, center, on a beach in Waikiki.CreditTimes Wide World Photos/The New York Times Turned to Water Polo

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Thomas Wilfred Sitting at the Clavilux "Model E," about 1924 (Thomas Wilfred Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.

This Artist Painted With Light. An Admiring Astronomer Helped Make Him a Star. The works and machinations of Thomas Wilfred, a lone performer, inventor and visionary, are now on view.

"Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light" is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through January 7, 2018.

It’s all so random: a decision to spend a weekend in New York, another decision to visit the Museum of Modern Art, and then, wandering through an exhibition gallery, a decision to turn left instead of right or right instead of left. But around that corner—"Wow!"—life changes.

So it was in 1960, when Eugene Epstein, then a young graduate student of astronomy with a spare weekend on his hands, cleared a gallery corner, peered into a darkened alcove, and spied a solitary work of art.

What had captivated Epstein—Vertical Sequence, Op. 137— was neither painting nor sculpture, but pure light—colorful and radiant, flowing and ebbing, eloquent and tender, turning and returning, as if the aurora borealis or some other atmospheric phenomenon had been corralled in the intimate space of a frame.

The artist Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968) called this and his other compositions "lumia," the art of light, which he passionately believed would be recognized as "the eighth fine art." Fifteen of Wilfred’s approximately 33 extant works—more than half owned now by Epstein, his wife Carol, and their nephew A.J. Epstein—are the subject of the exhibition "Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light," now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

With Lumia, Wilfred gave form to the imagined observation of the cosmos: "He is explicitly making reference to the experience of traveling through space-time, which is to his mind analogous to viewing a Lumia composition," says curator Keely Orgeman, of the Yale University Art Gallery, where the "Lumia" exhibition originally debuted."One is meant to imagine being immersed in this field of moving light in the cosmos and the screen is like the window of a spaceship looking out onto deep space."says Orgeman.

What had captivated Epstein—Vertical Sequence, Op. 137— was neither painting nor sculpture, but pure light—colorful and radiant, flowing and ebbing, eloquent and tender, turning and returning, as if the aurora borealis or some other atmospheric phenomenon had been corralled in the intimate space of a frame. The artist Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968) called this and his other compositions "lumia," the art of light, which he passionately believed would be recognized as "the eighth fine art."

Fifteen of Wilfred’s approximately 33 extant works—more than half owned now by Epstein, his wife Carol, and their nephew A.J. Epstein—are the subject of the exhibition "Lumia: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light," now on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "In conceiving of lumia as this independent art form, Wilfred believed these compositions of moving, colored light could stand on their own as immersive aesthetic experiences," says curator Keely Orgeman, of the Yale University Art Gallery, where the "Lumia" exhibition originally debuted.

The Danish-born Wilfred traced his lifelong fascination with light as a medium, not as an artistic subject, to a childhood pastime of refracting light through a chandelier prism and onto a wall in his home. Though his experiments and passion continued, Wilfred pursued a more formal education in painting and sculpture, studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and with instructors in England and Germany. Wilfred immigrated to the United States in 1916, seeking a warmer reception for his developing ideas about light as art and settling in New York City, where for income he sang Danish folk songs and performed on a lute.

He briefly joined a circle of artists who shared his interest in artistic experiments with light, and the Prometheans, as they dubbed themselves, established a studio on Long Island. But nudging his associates aside, the single-minded Wilfred, an electrician and mechanic as well as an artist, dedicated himself to the task of creating a machine—an instrument—that would "play" light, projected onto a screen, moving in complex and colorful variations of tempo, intensity and density.

By 1922, Wilfred had constructed and was performing silent concerts on his Clavilux Model A, an organ-like instrument outfitted with a panel of sliding controls that allowed him to manipulate light as it was emitted from several incandescent bulbs, filtered through revolving color-coated glass wheels, bounced off rotating reflective surfaces, and ultimately projected onto a large screen.

Wilfred composed with light as a musician composes with notes, but his recitals were silent: "The idea of visual music was not at all radical, but that he divorced his work from music is the radical move," Orgeman says. His Clavilux recitals grew into a national and then international sensation. "Wilfred was the impresario performing these live recitals of mobile color from his Clavilux," says Orgeman. "Cadenzas of Color, Symphonies of Silence, Unexplored Sensation," proclaimed one poster, circa 1926, for a New York City performance.

In 1964, just a few years before Wilfred’s death, Epstein acquired his first and long-awaited work, Sequence in Space, Op. 159 (1964/5). Epstein left work early to take delivery of the crate. When he unpacked the lumia work, he plugged it into a living room outlet and invited his cousin and his cousin’s wife to join him; that night he even moved the work into his bedroom to continue gazing at the quiet and mesmerizing frame of moving light. In short order, Epstein developed a routine with his lumia and his guests. "Lots of people had heard me excitedly talk about this fantastic thing that I had seen in New York," he recalls.

More than a half century has passed since Epstein encountered his first lumia composition. The range of his collection now includes the ephemeral—including a 1913 speeding ticket Wilfred incurred while driving in excess of 10 mph on a roadway outside of London; the practical—a posterity supply of incandescent light bulbs; and the aesthetic—eight of the individual "recorded" lumia compositions and six of the Clavilux Junior models, as well as the disassembled parts of a Clavilux model rescued from a dumpster. "It amazes me," he says. "It happened so gradually."

By Victoria Dawson smithsonian.com

Smithsonian Magazine

December 1, 2017

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/artist-painted-light-admiring-astronomer-helped-make-him-star-180967384/#8uLSwwIlQzVQr8Fo.