I lost a childhood idol last week, and with it returned one of my most favored childhood memories.

John Glenn, the last living member of the Mercury astronauts died Dec. 8.

He and the other six astronauts, Scott Carpenter, Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepherd and Deke Slayton were larger than life. Many of them were combat pilots in World War II and Korea; all of them, we were told, were going to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to send a man to the moon before the close of the decade. Wally Schirra and Alan Shepherd eventually fulfilled that promise.

Gus Grissom died preparing for it when the Apollo capsule he and two other astronauts were in caught fire during a drill in 1967.

John Glenn, who after his days with Mercury became a U.S. senator and got the chance at the age of 77 to go back up in space and fly on the Space Shuttle. He lived a dream many of us had growing up of riding that rocket into space to explore the world above our earth.

The Mercury astronauts’ story was well-told in the movie “The Right Stuff,” which ranks among my favorite films. The final scene of Dennis Quaid as Gordo Cooper lifting off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral to Bill Conti’s musical score is one of my favorite.

Today, we tend to take space travel for granted, and to many children today, the flights of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttles are something in the history books or on a video shown at some point during a school day.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, space travel was a dream and shrouded in mystery.

When Alan Shepherd flew the first Mercury mission in May 1961 aboard Freedom 7, every classroom across the country had a television in it. The questions abounded — will the missile leave the pad or blow up? Once he gets up, will he be able to come down and where? These were questions no one knew. The Russians had earlier claimed to have sent a man, Yuri Gagarin, into space and brought him back, but that information was suspect because of the Cold War. It was a different time back then.

When John Glenn went up and into orbit, everyone watched and some of the same questions remained — will he be able to come back down? The concern was heightened when people learned of a possible malfunction in his craft, Friendship 7, that may have caused his heat shield — which deflected the heat of re-entry — may have deployed. Like the combat pilot he was, he took the news calmly and waited.

It was that episode that made me admire John Glenn.

I only hope he and his fellow Mercury astronauts will be remembered as the pioneers they were.

To borrow from the send-off he received for his flight, “Godspeed, John Glenn.”

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John Surratt is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached by email at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.