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Cordosi Recalls Day He Drove John Glenn Around Los Angeles

Jamestown native Greg Cordosi, second from left, poses with former astronaut and then-Ohio Senator John Glenn and his wife, Annie, in March 1983. Glenn had announced his bid for president that day and was attending fundraisers in Los Angeles. Pictured from left is Annie Glenn; Cordosi; Jamestown native Kevin Kaiser; Bill Pearce; Rick Hosmer; and John Glenn. Submitted photo

Greg Cordosi didn’t own a suit or tie, or at least he doesn’t remember having anything in his closet that could be considered formal wear.

How he came in possession of the clothes — a blue shirt with white collar and a tan tie — is a little bit of a mystery as well. However, proof that Cordosi cleaned up well that day in March 1983 can be found in a now-fading photograph showing the Jamestown native standing just feet away from former astronaut John Glenn.

“It was just one of those things,” Cordosi told The Post-Journal following the death of Glenn, who died Thursday at the age of 95. “We all knew the whole thing was a little bit nutty. We were just young guys.”

And by all accounts they were young. One year earlier, Cordosi and lifelong friend Kevin Kaiser decided to leave Jamestown for warmer weather and a better chance to make some money.

The two also feared they were becoming too comfortable sitting around all day.

“We kind of just settled on Los Angeles,” Cordosi said. “So we figured if we couldn’t find a job there at least we knew we weren’t going to freeze.”

After trekking across the country with stops in Cincinnati, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; Little Rock, Arkansas, and Texas, the pair ended up in California and almost immediately landed a couple of jobs in a business they had mastered pretty well: bartending.

Cordosi and Kaiser began working at a new high-end bar in Manhattan Beach southwest of Los Angeles. It was there the two made a name for themselves, and with that came the connections and some pretty serious money.

“Here I am this 20-year-old from Jamestown of all places and I am making all this money tax free,” Cordosi said of the tips he made while serving drinks to some of the country’s most affluent residents.

“There was all this money and all these beautiful girls,” he said.

“In fact these were some of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.”

But it was a call Cordosi, now 55 and back in Jamestown, said he took one morning that would send him further into the rabbit hole he had dug for himself by that point. Only a year removed from New York, Cordosi got a call from Bill Pearce, his boss from the bar.

Pearce had a job for him and asked if he had any plans that day. “I said I wasn’t doing anything,” Cordosi recalls telling his boss.

However, the job required a shirt and tie, items Cordosi said he must have found between the time Pearce called and the time he and Kaiser set off for a regional airport. Their task for the day was relatively simple: Pick up the group arriving at the airport and drive them to a few fundraisers.

Not quite limo drivers — though the vehicles they drove were nice Buicks, Cordosi remembers — they were more like private chauffeurs.

That’s because they were there to pick up Glenn, then the Ohio senator and Democrat who earlier in the day had announced his candidacy for president. Glenn and his wife, Annie, flew to California to begin a round of fundraising efforts in what would later be a fruitless and short-lived bid for the White House.

Nonetheless, there was Cordosi and Kaiser, both of whom by that point had turned 21, shuttling the first American to ever orbit the Earth, and his wife.

“How on earth we were ever allowed to do this is beyond me,” Cordosi said. “Glenn had just announced and he was coming here, but for whatever reason they didn’t have any drivers lined up.”

As it turned out, Pearce knew a member of Glenn’s advance team — people who coordinate public appearances, photo ops and press coverage.

After arriving, Glenn and his entourage departed for a series of events. The former astronaut sat in the back of Cordosi’s car while Annie sat up front with him.

“She was just the nicest person,” Cordosi said. “That whole generation. They were just great people, and of course he was a public hero.”

Cordosi said he was awestruck by the experience as he witnessed first-hand the affable Glenn shake hands with people he met at the events. He was officially running a presidential campaign, after all.

Some events Cordosi and Kaiser were allowed into with the group. Others they weren’t.

What became increasingly apparent, though, was that no one questioned the identity of the two guys. In fact, Cordosi said he’s still at a loss today how they were ever allowed near the senator without so much as a background check.

“I can’t imagine anything like that happening today,” he said. “I mean they didn’t even ask for my criminal record, not that I had one or anything.”

The tour eventually took them to the mansion of former Los Angeles Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, who had died a few years earlier. There they ran into Henry Mancini, often cited as one of the greatest film composers. The series of events seemed to come right out of Hollywood movie, Cordosi said.

Then there was the view from the mansion, which looked over the city.

“The whole thing was just unreal,” Cordosi said. “I think we were all still in shock that the whole thing was happening.”

After the fundraisers, Cordosi, Kaiser, Pearce and Rick Hosmer — a friend of theirs — ended up in Glenn’s hotel room. The Glenns thanked the guys for their work, and before they left posed together for a quick picture to capture the moment.

It’s that day, forever documented and cataloged along with an autographed picture from the all-American hero himself, that Cordosi said he recalled first when told of Glenn’s death.

“It was probably one of the best days of my life,” he said. “I don’t even remember if we got paid that day. We might have, but I don’t remember and it didn’t even matter.”

Following his career with NASA in which he was selected as one of the “Mercury Seven” group of military test pilots to become America’s first astronauts, Glenn entered politics. He served as Ohio’s senator from 1974 to 1999, during which time he served as chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee.

“He was a great guy,” Cordosi said of Glenn. “I was sad when I heard the news that he passed away. You meet certain people in your life, and I can say I lived a charmed life.”

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