Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Roger, Houston: The Stork has landed

Scott Dickensheets

Saturday, Oct. 31, 1998 | 10:29 a.m.

I've been granted time off from my stern duties as cultural hall monitor to note -- in regard to John Glenn's history-making ascent into space -- that I missed it again! Thursday, as he boldly went where no septuagenarian caller-in-of-favors has gone before, I was busy with the sort of journalistic hunting and gathering we in the profession call "doing stuff." It must have been the wrong stuff because I missed liftoff.

It brings to mind a blast-off from the past. For as the cryptic tides of human events would have it, on the day of Glenn's first pioneering flight -- Feb. 20, 1962, when he became the first American to orbit the earth -- I was yet again distracted by a trivial matter: my birth. Yes, as Glenn was going up, I was coming out, and not nearly fast enough to suit the doctor.

I don't remember much about it myself, but reliable sources -- OK, my mother -- confirm that the normally kindly Dr. Young was somewhat beside himself. An exciting new chapter in history was being broadcast in glorious black and white, and in the birthing room of the Delta County, Colo., hospital, there was no TV.

"He was in an awful hurry to get you out," my mother recalls. Glenn's mission, you'll recall, lasted just five hours. "He kept saying 'Hurry up, for Pete's sake. I'm going to miss this. I don't want to miss this.' "

Such gentle grumpiness was out of character. "You'd have liked Dr. Young," Mom says now, her usual way of saying someone is either a likable eccentric, a dangerous lunatic or a Democrat (she draws little distinction between the latter two). He fell into the first category.

Dr. Young's eagerness to see Glenn's flight was rooted partly in his love of aviation; he was a pilot himself. At the time, my mother lived with her parents on a 400-acre farm well out of town. The doc often buzzed by in his little two-seater, rolling and diving over the house until Mom waddled out, belly full of incipient journalist, and he saw she was fine. If it's the rare doctor who would do house calls, it's the rarer one who will do flyover exams.

Like Glenn's 1962 takeoff -- delayed 10 times by bad weather and technical glitches -- my launch took time. Countdown lasted six hours. And when I did emerge, yikes! I was yellowish-orange. Houston, we have a problem -- a case of infant jaundice, which regular readers know I've never quite gotten over. I came this close to needing a full blood transfusion. More delays! Tests had to be run, measures taken. At last, though, I was stabilized, and Dr. Young was finally free to see the remaining coverage of the day's real blessed event.

By virtue of our similar voyages of discovery that day, I've always felt a bond with Glenn. I've certainly followed his career more closely than I have any other senator from Ohio. Our lives, in fact, have in some respects mirrored each other. When the headlines heralded his major triumphs -- "Glenn elected," and then, every six years, "Glenn re-elected" -- there were people taking note of my own achievements. "Hey, Scott cleaned his room," my mother would say, then, every six years, "Hey, Scott cleaned his room again."

As for old Dr. Young, I wanted to call him, see if he'd gotten to watch this time, but we've lost track of him. Mom thinks he moved to Utah. But thanks either to her advancing age or years of voting Republican, she can't remember his first name, so I'm not likely to find him now. Utah, I'm sure, has no shortage of people whose last name is Young. Anyway, I'd hate to have interrupted his viewing a second time. "Am I watchin' it? How can I, you durn fool, when I'm in here on the phone with you?"

And so, of the events of Feb. 20, 1962, perhaps it's enough -- more than enough, even -- to say this: one giant leap for man, little baby steps for me. They stand as a tribute both to mankind's outward-thrusting, can-do spirit, and to one infant's ability to avoid strangling on his own umbilical cord so he could grow up to be big and strong and do stuff. My connection to that day hasn't waned. When Mom revealed last week, "I almost named you John Glenn," I tell you, it was almost like having pulled strings to be on the shuttle myself.