Scrubbed

Wearing brown and white patterned pajamas, Astronaut John Glenn Jr., 42, smiled wanly as orderlies wheeled his bed past the television cameras set up in the hospital lounge at Texas' Lackland Air Force Base. Quipped Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, "Some reentry, isn't it?"

Glenn deeply felt the irony of it all. "We've been through 150 missions in two wars, having planes shot up from under us," he told newsmen. "We've been through test flying and the flight into orbit. And we've never been scratched in these other activities."

No Games. But there he was, laid out by a freak accident six weeks ago, just as he was getting ready to begin his campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination from Ohio. Glenn slipped on a throw rug, while trying to hoist a mirror back onto its tracks in the bathroom of his Columbus apartment, and cracked the left side of his head against the bathtub. The blow injured his inner ear, disrupting the vital apparatus that governs coordination, equilibrium and balance (see MEDICINE). Glenn had hoped that he would recover in time to resign from the Marines and wage a whirlwind campaign against peppery but aging (74) Democratic Senator Stephen Young before Ohio's May 5 primary. But a panel of specialists who examined him two weeks ago advised him that he would have to take it easy for at least the next several months.

That was enough for Glenn, even though some Democrats figured that he could give Young a good run for the nomination from his sickbed. "I told him he could win lying on his back in the hospital," said Ohio Representative Wayne Hays. But, Glenn, who was released from the hospital and went on convalescent leave at week's end, said, "I did not want to run just as a well-known name. No man has a right to ask for a seat in either branch of the Congress merely because of a specific event such as orbiting the earth."

In Cleveland and Columbus, crestfallen Glenn supporters shuttered their offices, and in Akron they refunded $20,000 worth of tickets to a $100-a-plate Glenn dinner. A few refused to give up, despite Glenn's insistence that "I am not playing games; I have withdrawn." Meeting in Columbus, a score of Glenn men decided to continue campaigning for him, since his decision to pull out came too late for his name to be removed from the ballot. "He's a guy who's gonna get better," said John

Wiethe, Democratic chairman of Hamilton County (Cincinnati).

Little Chance. The reluctance among some Ohio Democrats to drop Glenn is easily understood. They figure that Steve Young has little chance of defeating the odds-on favorite to win the G.O.P. primary, Congressman Robert A. Taft Jr. Now Glenn stands to draw a sizable but meaningless vote in the primary, and Steve Young will be the Democrats' man. And the way political observers see it, that probably means Ohio will have another Taft as Senator.

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