And so,
here are five old guys and how did I get to know them, or rather, how did they get to know
me. The photo is by Tom Young at a state convention in St. Paul. The year could be deduced
by the candidacies of some of the people involved.
Anyway, let's get to our involvement wuth them. On the left
is Orville Freeman, a former governor of Minnesota who went on to become a member of the
Johnson cabinet. In his first campaign for governor he invited several members of
the Minnesota press to join in a discussion of his views. I was one of three members of
the panel that ran for 30 minutes on WCCO television. We got to know each other and later
became good friends.
This was the year that Gene McCarthy was running for reelection to the
Senate. Gene was practically a home-town guy in Wabasha for he had married Abigail
Quigley, the daughter of the former publisher of The Wabasha County Herald. By
the time I got to Wabasha the Quigleys were no lnger there and the paper had been
consolidated with The Wabasha Standard. But Abigail come back to her home town
often with Gene in tow and that's where I first got to know him. Incidentally, the paper
Shila and I purchased was The Wabasha County Herald Standard but we soon changed
the name back to the original by dropping the Standard, much to the chagrin of
Luther and Iva Aasgaard who hated to see changes.
The guy in the poster above is Karl Rolvaag who was running for
governor that year. We knew him as an upcoming attorney in Rochester and of course he won
his race. He named Shila as the chief enumerator of the census for Wabasha County in 1960
and she recruited a cadre of workers and they did a good and honest job. In '69 as a
second record flood threated Wabasha, he as governor, sent me, as mayor, a National Guard
unit with trucks, jeeps, ducks and equipment of every kind and monitored out progress. As
a result, with the direction of the Corps of Engineers, we were able to build permant new
streets and areas that would lift most of of the city out of danger for future floods of
the Mississipi. Later, in Roseau where Karl would come to visit his sister, we spent many
hours over Norwegian coffee in the cotner restaurant.
The next man turned out to be a fellow Texas. Sure, I shook his
hand but I don't think his recollection of me lasted very long.
Hubert Humphrey was a part of my life for all the years. When I
was with The Hennepin County Review in Hopkins, Hubert was teaching political
science at MacCallester (check that spelling) College and he would come out and join Jim
Markham, Ed Prochaska and me in a booth in Burch's Bar and we reinforced his ambition of
becoming mayor of Minneapolis. Throught the years, as he traveled southern Minnesota, he
made our shop his headquarters and we had a warm personal relationship that neither of us
ever forgot.
Our photograph did not include Gene Foley, Walter Mondale, Al
Quie, Anders Andresen or other national notables it has been our pleasure to know.
Gene Foley, my Wabasha city attorney, ran for Congress but
was defeated by Al Quie with some 300 votes. Gene wound up in Washington as Administrator
of the SBA, a member of the Johnson Cabinet. And when we visited the Capitol he gave us
his car and driver for a day and a half VIP tour the city.
Al Quie served as our Congressman and thenas Governor of
Minnesota. We had a great meeting with him the day after he filed the first time around
and the friendship continued for all the years.
Vice President and candidate for President, Walter Monndale, was
another friend. I will never forget the day, in my semi-blindness, I was walking
down the sidewalk and the guy across the street yelled "Hey, Ray!". That's how I
related to Fritz.
Congressman Andreesen did his best to convert me to his brand of
conservatism but he was a good friend anyway.
So I have enjoyed yakkin' about all these people and there
are more I should have included. But take it or leave it, you know it's coming from a
life-long Democrat.
THE BLACK HAND
Back in 1950 when Harry Truman was making his famous whistle-stop train trip, I received an invitation to ride along up the Hiawatha valley. After listening to his speech in Winona, I climbed aboard and joined the reporters in the Press car. I was highly impresskked for there were the elite East-coast journalists and I sat listening. When the President came forward to chat I introduced myself as the publisher of the Wabasha County Herald and said that we were just passing through my town. He bend to look out the window, missed the crowd at the depot and saw big gravel pits. We both chuckled.
Some of my friends on neighboring newspapers reported the trip, mentioned that I had shaken the hand of the President and promptly dubbed me as “Young with the Black Hand”. Said that I would never was the aura from it. But..... I had been on the train and they had not been invited.
AN HONEST COUNT
Shila was also politically oriented and when we attended a county convention she was named the Democratic Chairwoman. As such she was then named to conduct the county census in 1950. She did her training in Rochester under Karl Rolvaag amd we then found her a Pontiac coupe of unknown vintage and plastered it with placards and she was off. Through the by-ways and cowpaths of Wabasha County she found the help she needed in the various townships, ran a school for them and then checked and re-checked until the job was finished She turned in a honest count, unlike the rumors of some of her predecessors who had padded the rolls with all the names on the tombstones.
A HELPING HAND
Senator Hubert Humphrey was the speaker at a party rouser in Wabasha one evening and as the school auditorium was filling, I handed my camera to 13-yr old daughter Janet and told her to take the picture. As she approached the Senator, he recognized her and braced for action. She was having trouble fiddling with an unfamiliar camera and he stepped forward and offer to help her. Fixed. The flashbulb popped, she had the picture!
ANOTHER DAY