Gleaning Facebook: HHH & RFK

In 1968 I was very active along with Ed Johnson and a few others in the tiny Asbury College Young Democrats. History professor "Ms Chic" 

Somehow in the fall of '68 our YD group managed to pay a sign painter to do up this indoor sign for the HQ -- I suppose on butcher paper. It is about sixteen feet long and three feet wide. It spanned one whole wall of the HQ which we rented on Main Street in the village of Wilmore.

Somewhere I have an old b&w photo of some of us in the HQ with this sign behind us.

It was unfolded and spread -- for the first time in fifty years -- in my front hall last night so I could climb the stairs ant take these pictures.

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Earlier that year I had campaigned in Indiana for Bobby Kennedy:

In the Spring of '68, several of us from Asbury, abetted by our history professor Ms. Ciccorella and her daughter, Pat, made our way to Louisville and across the Ohio River to New Albany, Indiana to campaign for Robert Kennedy.

One of our duties in New Albany was to make signs for supporters to hold up when Bobby & Ethel came to town.

These are some of the signs I made and that we used when we met the Kennedys at the Louisville airport.

I didn't use these signs though. Somehow I managed to be chosen to don a ridiculous sash and styrofoam hat emblazoned with Kennedy bling and stand in the airport receiving line as the token college kid among the bigwigs.

I wish I had managed to save more of the official campaign stuff rather than these silly signs!

Still it was a thrill to shake the hands of our next president (as I believed) and his wife.

At the time I was disappointed that Kennedy had such a limp handshake (Ethel's was very firm!) -- I have since heard that major presidential candidates end up with very sore hands pretty quickly, so I have tried to give him a little break on that score.

David Matheny

You met Bobby K.??

Terrell Shaw
Very briefly, but yep. Just a handshake in the Louisville airport.

George Anderson
Terrell Shaw "He was the best of the best."

Kennedy won the Indiana primary, but only a month later the dream was shattered by an assassin's bullet.

This is one of the official posters I saved from the Indiana campaign.

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Eleven of the items in this shadow box are from my own campaigning in 1968. The matchbook is from the dinner I attended for the campaign in Louisville -- so that preserves the date as September 20, 1968.

I think I picked up the faded "If I were 21" in '68. Of course I was from Georgia where eighteen-year-olds could already vote, so I cast my first presidential vote for Hubert Humphrey. I worked hard as a college senior and co-president of our Young Democrats at Asbusry College. I met Humphrey twice that year. I was impressed that he took the time to actually talk with us and listen to us briefly. 

And we almost came back to win that year ... what a blessing for America it would have been to elect this good man and avoid the Nixon scandals. Even George Will admits that Nixon committed treason to be elected that year, meddling in the Vietnam peace negotiations to postpone a settlement till after the election. Nixon was the crookedest president ever... until January 20, 2017.