SERIES 1: AUDIO TAPES Boxes 1 - 12
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The Audio Tapes Series consists of 469 sound recordings dating from 1959 to 1998, though most tapes date from the 1980s and 1990s. Formats within the series include cassette tapes, micro-cassette tapes, and reel-to-reel tapes ranging from three to seven inches in diameter. The arrangement of the recordings within the series is first by format, then by the sub-series of senate, NASA, family, and Annie Glenn. Arrangement of the tapes within each sub-series is in chronological order.
Most of the 2656 sound recordings on cassette tape date from John Glenn's career in the U.S. Senate. The tapes contain recordings of interviews, press conferences, and speeches, along with recordings dating from 1985 to 1988 of Glenn's "Dateline Washington" radio program. Also included is a series of recordings from the Great Lakes Washington Roundtables on Pollution Prevention held between April and December 1994. The Great Lakes Task Force, a bipartisan coalition co-chaired by Senator Glenn of U.S. Senators from the states bordering the Great Lakes, sponsored these roundtables.
With just a few exceptions, the 105 micro-cassettes in the series date from Glenn's campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination in the 1984 presidential election. Dating from 1982 to 1984, the recordings consist of speeches, interviews, and press conferences. Other micro-cassettes contain recordings from the late 1980s of various political speeches and statements on such policy issues as arms control, "Star Wars," and pollution.
The NASA sub-series of cassette recordings includes tapes containing the air/ground communications during the Friendship 7 space flight on February 20, 1962, and Glenn's interviews and statements on significant anniversaries of the event. Other recordings date from Glenn's return to space in 1998 as a crewmember aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery Mission STS-95. These tapes include training sessions and various media interviews.
Most of the 99 reel-to-reel tape recordings in the series pertain to Glenn's space flight aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft. The recordings include multiple tape sets of the space flight's air/ground communications, and a set of tapes from the New York City ticker-tape parade held in honor of Glenn on March 1, 1962. Also included are recordings of a few radio programs produced in tribute to the space flight. The series contains recordings of various poetry, music, and messages sent to Glenn by school children and the general public. Other tapes contain recordings of the statements and interviews made by Glenn following his space flight, including his speech to a special joint session of Congress. Also of note are recordings of the speeches he and Soviet cosmonaut Gherman S. Titov delivered at the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) meeting in May 1962, and recordings of the radio broadcasts from the goodwill tour of Europe Glenn made for NASA in 1965.
Reel-to-reel recordings from John Glenn's years in the U.S. Senate consist chiefly of radio spots from his 1970 through 1980 election campaigns, and a few interviews about his consideration as the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee in the 1976 presidential election. Also included is a recording of the statements made by Annie Glenn and Rene Carpenter at an event during Glenn's 1964 senate campaign.
The series also contains several recordings of speeches made by Annie Glenn, including her first public speech given on September 15, 1979 at the Canton (Ohio) Women's Club. Included in the series under the family sub-series is a recording of the "Layman Sunday" sermon John Glenn delivered in 1959 to the congregation of the Little Falls Presbyterian Church in Arlington, Virginia. Also in the family sub-series are five cassette tapes recorded by Lyn Glenn during her trip in 1985 to various refugee camps in Southeast Asia.