The Ohio State University

The Shoulder Patches Category consists of sixty-two embroidered cloth or embossed leather patches designed for wear on the shoulder or breast area of an aviation flight suit or jacket.  Some of the patches in the collection date from the years John Glenn served as an aviator in the U.S. Marine Corps.  These military items include leather name tags Glenn wore on his flight suits, a logo patch from his Korean War squadron in 1953, and a patch from the U.S. Navy’s test pilot school at Patuxent River, Maryland, dating from the mid-1950s. 

Most of the patches in the collection pertain to John Glenn’s career as a NASA astronaut.  Included are official and commemorative patches from the Friendship 7 space flight in 1962 and from the Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-95 in 1998.  Other NASA patches are from various space shuttle missions flown during the 1980s and 1990s.  Also included are patches with the logos for a variety of NASA programs, units and events. 

The collection also contains a few patches dating from John Glenn’s twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate.  In general, these patches commemorate events or entities of particular interest to Senator Glenn.