My John Glenn Story At NASA's Kennedy Space Center

John Glenn passed away yesterday and if anyone defines the term "American hero", it would be John Glenn. Among his many accomplishments is being the first American to orbit the earth.

This is a true story that my wife likes to bring up as it shows my lack of judgement -- not in a bad way, but a humorous way.

On Wednesday January 21st, 1998 I was working for Sun Microsystems and was giving a non-disclosure to NASA at Kennedy Space Center.  NASA was an very important account for Sun and we were doing a great deal of custom real-time programming at the Solaris, library and application levels.  It was an afternoon meeting with a private tour after my presentation.

I really hit it off well with the senior person at NASA.  By the end of the day we were joking back and forth.  As we were wrapping up, he says to me, "Dave, if you are interested, you could come as one of my guests tomorrow night when John Glenn will be here to observe the launch? "

Now, ANY rationale person would have said, "YES, absolutely!"  Me being a dummy, I said, "I would love but I am coaching my oldest son basketball and we have practice tomorrow night."

When I told my wife, she naturally said, "What were you thinking!!!?"

I was not thinking and I regret it to this day.  Here is the real kicker, when I got back, practice was canceled.

John Glenn went into space on October 29th of 1998.

God bless John Glenn.