Gerald Ford Clipping / May 10, 1974 // Charleston, Ill.
OK, no matter who the vice-president is, it should be kind of a big deal when they visit your town, right?
Gerald Ford, who was then the vice president, visited Charleston on May 9, 1974, and spoke at Eastern. I thought it would be neat to go through the microfilm and see what all we had from that day. I’m picturing lots of photos of crowds, a big banner headline, some nice stuff from him speaking…
What did my workplace do? They ran a photo of the mayor of Mattoon talking to Gerald Ford on page three! It was a picture of the back of his head!
That was all they had they had in the paper for his visit!
Sigh.
Sadly, I think a lot of the same decision-makers are still around.
Anyway, here’s the Journal Gazette’s slice of Gerald Ford history… the back of his head.
I was there at the Ford speech. I was about 7 and they made all the students from EIU’s lab school attend.
I blogged about it here, what I can remember
http://penguinsix.com/?p=893