John Glenn reunites with 50-year-old Mercury team (AP) - John Glenn joined the proud, surviving veterans of NASA's Project Mercury on Saturday in celebrating the 50th anniversary of his historic orbital flight. The first American to orbit the Earth thanked the approximately 125 retired Mercury workers, now in their 70s and 80s, who gathered with their spouses at Kennedy Space Center to swap stories, pose for pictures and take a bow. "There are a lot more bald heads and gray heads in that group than others, but those are the people who did lay the foundation," the 90-year-old Glenn said at an evening ceremony attended by NASA officials, politicians, astronauts and hundreds of others. We may be up on the point of that thing and get a lot of the attention, and we had ticker-tape parades and all that sort of thing. But the people who made it work ... you're the ones who deserve the accolade. So give yourselves a great big ovation," Glenn said, leading the crowd in applause. Glenn and fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter, now 86, spent nearly an hour before the ceremony being photographed with the retirees, posing for individual pictures in front of a black curtain with a model of a Mercury-Atlas rocket. Glenn and Carpenter are the lone survivors of NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts. Earlier in the day, the Mercury brigade traveled by bus to Launch Complex 14. That's the pad from which Glenn rocketed away on Feb. 20, 1962. Some retirees were in wheelchairs, while others used walkers or canes. As retired engineer Norm Beckel Jr. rode to the pad Saturday, he recalled being seated in the blockhouse right beside Scott Carpenter as the astronaut called out to Glenn right before liftoff, "Godspeed John Glenn." "Nothing was said by anybody until they said, `He's in orbit,' and then the place erupted," Beckel recalled. Bob Schepp, 77, who like Beckel traveled from St. Louis, Mo., for the reunion, was reminded by the old launch equipment of how rudimentary everything was back then. Glenn's flight was the turning point that put America on a winning path that ultimately led to the moon. "It's been downhill from here," Palombo said with a laugh. NASA's celebration of Glenn's three-orbit, five-hour flight aboard the Friendship 7 capsule began Friday at Cape Canaveral. The festivities move to Columbus, Ohio, on Monday, the actual anniversary. Glenn will be honored at a gala at Ohio State University; its school of public affairs bears his name. His wife of 68 years, Annie, now 92, and their two children are accompanying him to all the festivities. Glenn served in the U.S. Senate for 24 years, representing his home state of Ohio. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 1984. He returned to space in 1998 aboard shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest spaceman ever at age 77. Carpenter told the crowd Saturday that he's still waiting for his first shuttle ride, drawing a big laugh. The Mercury 7 astronauts were immortalized in Tom Wolfe's book about the space program, "The Right Stuff," which was later made into a movie. Although Wolfe suggested the nation will never see another hero of Glenn's stature, Carpenter noted, "Maybe one day before too long the great hero John Glenn himself may be replaced by another national hero who represents the command of a Mars crew returned safely." "John, thank you for your heroic effort and all of you for your heroic effort," Carpenter told the Mercury old-timers. But we stand here waiting to be outdone.