After John Glenn left NASA, he became fast friends with Robert F. Kennedy. This above image, taken the day before RFK was assassinated, shows RFK (front) with two of his boys and John Glenn riding a Matterhorn bobsled at Disneyland.
The Kennedys and the Glenns started vacationing together not long after Glenn left NASA. They spent a lot of time together at Hyannis Port, MA but at least once they traveled to Idaho to brave the rapids of the Salmon River.
It was partly because of Bobby's influence that Glenn first agreed to run for one of Ohio's two senate seats. His first campaign was a disaster and he had to withdraw after suffering an injury that wrecked his equilibrium.
After his friend, RFK, was assassinated, Glenn felt it was his duty to get elected and try to honor his friend's legacy as best as he could.
Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1976 (his wife Annie watches as he takes the oath of office for the first time) and would go on to serve four terms - the first four term Senator from the state of Ohio.
Before retiring from the Senate in 1998, the seventy-seven year old convinced NASA to let him return to space to run experiments on how space affects those over sixty-five. The press conference announcing his mission drew more attention than most anything he did as an elected official and featured a large picture of Glenn in his Project Mercury days.
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