was back on April 10, 1976, when he had a Q&A session at the WTSU Fieldhouse. I was there as a member of the CHS Eagle Band, which (as best as I recall) played the National Anthem for that occasion (I believe the WTSU band had the honor of playing Hail to the Chief).

We were situated directly behind and above the President, so mostly we saw the back of his head during the evening. He did, however, at one point turn around and throw a smile and a friendly wave at us. (And we went nuts. Hey, we were teenagers in a small town out in West Texas. How often does a U.S. President – even an accidental one – come to town and wave at you?)

If you want to know what was on the electorate’s mind back in the mid-1970s, the transcript of the Q&A session should give you a fairly good idea ... http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=5837

quote:

---

[11.] Q. Mr. President, what qualities in a leader do you deem necessary for a person in the Presidency to possess? As we go to the polls as voters in November we need to be aware of these qualities of leadership.

THE PRESIDENT. From my 27-plus years in public life – 25 years in the Congress and 2-plus years as Vice President and President – I would summarize it this way: I think a person in public life has to be honest with himself and frank and candid in his relationship with people, whether he represents a congressional district or represents the 215 million people in the United States. That is number one.

Number two, I think there has to be a basic intelligence that is related to your education, whether it was in school or whether it was in the business world or whether it was in your profession. You have to have not only an educational background but an experienced background. Experience is vitally important as one sees day after day the kind of problems that come across the President's desk.

I can assure you that it is not an 8-hour day, and don't get me wrong, I love it. I can't wait to get to the office every morning, and I don't go home tired and worn out and otherwise unhappy at night. But I think you have to have some experience because the wide spectrum of problems that come to the desk--say yes or no, you seldom can say maybe. You have to have experience, you have to be able to make decisions decisively, you have to have a capability of coming forth with constructive suggestions to solve our problems.

You can't sit back and say this is wrong, it is terrible, or that is wrong, and I can't do anything about it. You have to look at the problem through experience, through education, through good judgment, through honesty. You have to come forth with some solutions, not just be critical. And those are the kinds of ingredients that I think are essential and vital for any President, whether it is President in 1976 or whether it is in the future or whether it has been the case in the past.

---

although for the life of me, I have no idea of what the Buckley Amendment was about ...

quote:

---

[12.] Q. Mr. President, would you support legislation that would repeal the Buckley amendment, and do you think that this amendment has had an adverse effect on the effectiveness of educators in making unbiased reports and recommendations on students?

THE PRESIDENT. As I understand it, the Buckley amendment, which requires the public disclosure of all school applicants as well as the school records of students who are in colleges and universities, is that correct?

Q. Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT. I think the experience that has been held in the last 12 or 18 months since that went into effect would argue very affirmatively that there ought to be modification in that legislation. I know that Senator Buckley, when he offered the amendment and when it was passed by the Congress, did it with the best of intentions.

But I think experience has proven that it went too far. It is inflexible, and there ought to be some changes. And I hope that the Congress will do so.

---

quote:

---

Q. Mr. President, we have time for one more question.

THE PRESIDENT. Oh, gosh, can we take a couple more? If you can stand it, I am enjoying it. [Laughter]

---

Thanks for posting, though it frightens me to think of you as being from my town.




I don't remember his visit to the Panhandle. Of course I grew up in Hale Center and would have been in my junior year at A&M at the time.

What's really scary is, I was considered to be one of the more straitlaced and comformist types ( a/k/a "square" and "establishment" )in my class back then ...

I still have in my possession the poster advertising Ford's visit to Canyon/WTSU. I showed it to my 8-year-old daughter last night while we talked about the death of the former President. I think she was impressed for all of about 15 seconds. The mid 1970s is ancient history to her ...

[This message has been edited by BrazosBendHorn (edited 12/28/2006 8:10a).]

BBH-

I was born 10 years after WWII. My son was born 13 years after Americans left Vietnam. Hard to imagine that to him, VN is more ancient than WWII is to me.

Here's a sobering thought -

1976 is as close in time to 1946 as it is to 2006 ...

if you were born (for example) in 1955, the year of your birth would be as close in time to 1904 as to 2006 ... (but it really doesn't seem that way, does it?)

(pretty clever, huh? I learned that trick from a history professor)

When I was in high school in the 1970s, we had a "Fifties Day" to commemorate the bygone era of the 1950s (made popular at the time by American Graffiti and Happy Days (which is to say, we put on straight-legged blue jeans, white T-shirts and slicked our hair back with enormous amounts of Brylcreme) ... now our kid's babysitters talk about how all that "cool old stuff from the Seventies" is coming back into style ...
:0

the "cool" stuff from the seventies was never very cool....just stupid looking wide lapels, even more stupid bell bottoms, and bad hair cuts

Thanks for posting the link to the speech. I was a Junior at WTSU then and heard his speech at the field house, even though I didn't remember what he spoke about. I do remember my friends talking about the week leading up to his visit that his Secret Service Agents showed up on campus. Some of them showed up in classes while others acted like maintenance workers on campus to make sure there would be no problems. WT at that time was as conservative as A&M's.

quote:

---

WT at that time was as conservative as A&M's

---

Does that mean that WT has subsequently become a lonely beacon of progressive thought on the high plains?

Although, come to think of it, WT was years ahead of places like TAMU and UT (not to mention Alabama and Ole Miss!) by bringing in guys like Mercury Morris and Duane Thomas to play football back in the mid-1960s ...

Which is not to say that Coach Kerbel's primary motivation was to strike a blow for civil rights and the equality of opportunity for all races, he just wanted to win football games ...

[This message has been edited by BrazosBendHorn (edited 1/15/2007 9:24a).]

But I digress ...

back to the subject at hand ...