Twice in recent days, our neighbors to the west of the Keystone State have given us moments whereby fathers can better try to explain to their children the meaning of the word hero.

The name John Glenn, who passed away at the age of 95 last Thursday, is one recognized throughout the world. He was a true American icon after becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1959.The second heroic Buckeye operated under the radar of world events but was just as much a hero for his actions during a time of great peril. Alan Horujko was the Ohio State University police officer who engaged and stopped Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who recklessly drove his car into people on campus grounds and then began slashing students with a butcher knife.Horujko joined the police department last year after deciding to leave engineering at OSU and pursue a career in law enforcement. The officer told one interviewer he decided to switch his major because he couldn't see himself sitting in a cubicle.Two weeks ago, Horujko's career switch had life-changing consequences for the people targeted at OSU by the self-radicalized Artan, a refugee from Somalia who once praised radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki as a hero.There's no telling how many lives Horujko saved by taking out the terrorist.As for John Glenn, he was a real-life action hero to baby boomers like myself growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We idolized the pioneers of spaceflight, especially the Mercury 7 astronauts which included Glenn, Walter Schirra, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, M. Scott Carpenter, Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper.I had brief meetings with two of them, having had the privilege to meet Cooper several years before his death in 2004 and also hearing Carpenter speak at college, years before his death in 2013.There's a good reason why just about every obituary on Glenn includes the word hero in either the headline or lead sentence. When Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in his Friendship 7 spacecraft, no one was even sure what effect space travel would have on the human body.Glenn's first taste of flying as an 8-year-old hinted that he would have a lifelong career in aviation. During World War II and the Korean War, he flew 149 combat missions. His plane was hit by enemy fire 12 different times and during his service in the two wars, he received many honors, including the Distinguished Flying Cross six times.Seven months after Glenn's epic space flight in 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech, which challenged NASA scientists and urged the American people to support the national effort to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.In 1998, Glenn, at age 77, climbed aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and became the oldest human to leave the planet as a member of mission STS-95. NASA did a number of medical tests on Glenn during the mission to study the effects of spaceflight on older humans.Among the many condolences that have poured in from across the world following Glenn's death last week was a message from Ohio State University President Michael V. Drake, who called him Ohio's consummate public servant, a true American hero who lived as one of the great people of our time.For those versed on Ohio State football tradition, it should be noted that Glenn was one of only a few, select nonband members to dot the "i" in Script Ohio at the Horseshoe stadium in Columbus.Buckeye nation and the entire state of Ohio have reason to be proud of their American heroes in the past few weeks - one a legendary astronaut who became an iconic figure around the world and the other, a behind-the-scenes local police officer who responded to an emergency call and by doing so, saved numerous lives by his prompt action.By Jim Zbick |

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