John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962.

Wednesday, February 21, 1962

President Kennedy yesterday expressed the Nation's pride and thanksgiving after Lt. Col. John H. Glenn voyaged thrice around the earth in space. He told the Marine Corps Astronaut that he would fly to Cape Canaveral to see him Friday.

He also invited him to come to Washington on Monday or Tuesday for a parade along Pennsylvania Avenue and welcoming ceremonies at the White House and the Capitol.

Mr. Kennedy, who with Mrs. Kennedy began watching on television at 7:15 a.m. saw Col. Glenn's takeoff at 9:47 a.m. on a portable set during breakfast in the small dining room of the White House with Democratic leaders of Congress.

The Chief Executive continued to follow the flying Leatherneck's progress until he was out of the spacecraft and aboard the Destroyer Noa. The President then walked out to the South Grounds to salute the astronaut in a gracious little talk before the cameras and microphones.

''We have a long way to go in this space race,'' Mr. Kennedy said. ''We started late. But this is the new ocean, and I believe the United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.

A little later, Mr. Kennedy talked to the Astronaut by radio telephone. The conversation went like this.

The President: ''Hello?''

Col. Glenn: ''Hello, Sir.''

The President: ''Colonel?''

Col. Glenn: ''This is Colonel Glenn.''

The President: ''Listen, Colonel, we are really proud of you and I must say you did a wonderful job.''

Col. Glenn: ''Thanks, Mr. President.

The President: ''We are glad you got down in very good shape. I have just been watching your father and mother on television and they seemed very happy.''

Col. Glenn: ''It was a wonderful trip — almost unbelievable thinking back on it right now. But it was really tremendous.''

The President: ''Well I am coming down to Canaveral on Friday and hope you will come up to Washington on Monday or Tuesday and we will be looking forward to seeing you there.

Col. Glenn: ''Fine. I will certainly look forward to it.''

Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a U.S. Senator from Ohio; in 1998, he flew into space again at the age of 77. He was one of the Mercury Seven, military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth, the third American and fifth person in history to be in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Glenn resigned from NASA in January 1964. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years, until January 1999. In 1998, at age 77, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission, making him the oldest person to enter Earth orbit, the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs, and the first Member of Congress to visit space since Congressman Bill Nelson (D-FL) in 1986. Glenn, both the oldest and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven, died at the age of 95 on December 8, 2016.

Before joining NASA, Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II, the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. He shot down three MiG-15s, and was awarded six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen Air Medals. In 1957, he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across the United States. His on-board camera took the first continuous, panoramic photograph of the United States.

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy (February 27, 1958 – December 31, 1997) was an American lawyer, businessman, and activist in Massachusetts. He was the sixth of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. Kennedy also served as the manager of the non-profit organization Citizens Energy. He died in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997 after skiing inadvertently into a tree.

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was born on February 27, 1958, in Washington, D.C. He was named LeMoyne for Kirk LeMoyne Billings, the preparatory school roommate of his paternal uncle, John F. Kennedy, and a Kennedy family friend. He was five years old when his uncle was assassinated and ten years old when his father was assassinated.

He graduated with a B.S. degree from Harvard College in 1980 and subsequently earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1984.

Kennedy married Victoria Denise Gifford, daughter of former professional football player and sportscaster Frank Gifford and Maxine Avis Ewart, on March 14, 1981, in New York City.

They had one son, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy Jr. (born January 9, 1983), and two daughters, Kyle Francis Kennedy (born July 6 1984) and Rory Gifford Kennedy (born October 14, 1987). The family resided in Cohasset, Massachusetts. 

After law school, Kennedy worked briefly for a private law firm in Boston, Massachusetts.

After his brother Joseph was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, Kennedy became the manager of his non-profit organization, Citizens Energy Corporation, which provides heating oil and services to elderly and low-income households in Massachusetts and other cold-weather states.

Kennedy co-chaired the Walden Woods Project, a non-profit organization to preserve Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1994, he co-founded Stop Handgun Violence, a group that works to increase public awareness about the danger of handguns. That same year, he helped organize his uncle Ted Kennedy's successful re-election campaign for the U.S. Senate against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, later a governor of Massachusetts and United States senator from Utah.