{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-honors-john-glenn", "Brown Honors John Glenn", "2016-12-17", "2016", "2016-12", "Democrat", "House", "OH", "Sherrod Brown", "B000944", "www.brown.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Remarks at John Glenn's Celebration of Life\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tSaturday, December 17, 2016\n            \n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tCOLUMBUS, OH -- U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's remarks as prepared for delivery at John Glenn's Celebration of Life follow below.\u00a0\r\nU.S. Senator Sherrod Brown\r\nRemarks as Prepared for Delivery: John Glenn\u2019s Celebration of Life\r\nMershon Auditorium, The Ohio State University\r\nDecember 17, 2016\r\nBy any measure \u2013 accomplishment, service, courage \u2013 John Glenn was a great man.\u00a0 But when I think of John Glenn, I think of a good man.\r\nMy first taste of John Glenn, the good man, was on March 4, 1968, at the Madison Theater in Mansfield, Ohio.\u00a0\u00a0 More than fifty teenage boys had gathered for our Eagle Scout Dinner.\u00a0 Colonel Glenn was the speaker.\u00a0\r\nJohn Glenn, national hero, met each of us.\u00a0 John Glenn, perhaps the most famous man of his generation, took a picture with us \u2013 one at a time.\u00a0 He always took time for you, no matter your station in life.\u00a0\u00a0 And that lesson has stuck with me.\u00a0\r\nAlmost 39 years later, former Senator John Glenn walked me down the center aisle of the United States Senate to be sworn in.\u00a0 And of course \u2013 like the Eagle Scouts of four decades earlier \u2013 all the new senators wanted to meet their American hero.\u00a0 He was kind to them too.\r\nI had the honor to see John Glenn up close \u2013 at work and at play; with family and with strangers.\r\nEvery presidential year, Ohio\u2019s most prominent Democrat would board a bus with our presidential or vice-presidential nominee to campaign around Ohio.\u00a0 I watched the retired Senator \u2013 a mentor to so many of us \u2013 reconnect with Senator Kerry in 2004 and Senator Biden in 2008.\u00a0 And I saw him, for the first time, meet the young Senator from Illinois, and the immediate connection that the American icon and the future President made.\u00a0\r\nI saw him, a decade after his retirement, get off the bus, jump over a ditch, and shake the outstretched hand of an appreciative farmer.\u00a0\r\nJohn was there, in non-presidential years, for Ohio Democrats too.\u00a0 Bus travel is rarely glamourous. But with presidential candidates, it\u2019s at least modern and comfortable.\r\nIn 2006 we boarded a, shall we say, older, less opulent Winnebago with the Ohio Democratic ticket to campaign through small-town and rural Ohio.\u00a0 As we traveled up and down the hills of John\u2019s beloved southeast Ohio, the rest of us began to get car sick . . . but of course not the 85-year-old astronaut, who simply smiled. \u00a0\r\nAnd I saw the elder statesman as he spoke to an adoring crowd, transferring some of his magic to the rest of us.\r\nJohn was an FDR Democrat, Roosevelt saved America, after all, John said \u2013 an FDR Democrat who cared about justice and opportunity for people with less privilege than most of us in this room have.\r\nHe never forgot the, \u201cterror that struck his 10 or 11 year old heart\u201d when he overheard his parents saying that their mortgage was about to be foreclosed.\r\nIt was a New Deal, government-backed FHA loan that allowed John\u2019s father to renegotiate with the bank and keep his family in their home.\u00a0 Some years later, it was the federal government that paid for John\u2019s first flying lessons.\r\nJohn knew, as he later wrote in his memoir that, \u201cthat government can change people\u2019s lives for the better.\u201d\r\nToo many remembrances have written of John\u2019s brand of patriotic optimism as a throwback to a bygone era. But it\u2019s needed today more than ever.\r\nJohn believed in an activist government and an active citizenship. And he warned that cynicism and apathy were a threat to democracy itself.\r\nJohn\u2019s friend Robert Kennedy, who helped to convince him to run for the Senate, called politics a calling, almost like the ministry. \u00a0\r\nPresbyterian John liked those words. John said, \u201cThe happiest and most fulfilled people I\u2019ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self-interest.\u201d \u00a0\r\nThat drove John\u2019s activism and his public service. And it drove him to create the Glenn School to inspire the next generation of active, engaged citizens.\u00a0\r\nJohn Glenn was the only Ohioan ever to be elected four times to the United States Senate.\u00a0 He was a work horse, never a show horse. He labored over the details of non-proliferation and environmental cleanup of nuclear disposal sites \u2013 grunt work to some. But John was content to spend his time, not on collecting instant headlines, but achieving lasting results that would leave the world in better shape than he found it.\r\nHe helped create the independent watchdogs we know as inspectors general - to keep the government he believed in honest and accountable to the people it serves. And he had the foresight to found the Great Lakes Task Force, which continues to play an important role in our work to protect the health of our lakes and the local jobs that depend on them.\r\nThe night before the 50th anniversary of Colonel Glenn\u2019s space launch, Connie and I had dinner in German Village with Annie and John and Lyn and David and Karen.\u00a0 As the evening wound down, we headed to the door together; the valet pulled up to the front of the restaurant with John\u2019s Cadillac.\u00a0 The 91-year-old astronaut hopped in the driver\u2019s seat, Annie in front passenger seat, and the kids \u2013 now all on the other side of 60 \u2013 piled in the back.\u00a0 Some things never change.\r\nAnd oh, how they were in love \u2013 Annie and John.\u00a0\u00a0 I spoke with Annie last April, on their 73rd wedding anniversary.\u00a0 She told me that they waited to get married until after John finished his flight training in 1943.\u00a0 We wanted to get married in high school, Annie said, \u201cbut our parents wouldn\u2019t let us because they said it would never last.\u201d\r\nTheir love was infectious - the stuff of fairy tales - and they shared it with everyone around them.\r\nA former Glenn staffer told me that, \u201cJohn Glenn took joy in helping others and was so proud of his staff.\u00a0 Even when you left, you were still family.\u201d\r\nJohn had a way of making everyone around him feel important \u2013 from the teenage Eagle Scouts to the farmer in the field. He lived his life by Matthew 25: Jesus admonished his followers, \"Whenever you did it for any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you did it for me.\"\r\nThat was John Glenn. The great American hero, was a good man.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-honors-john-glenn"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.3405430149286985, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}