I was at the University of Michigan stadium when President Lyndon Johnson announced the Great Society in 1964

 

We took a school bus from Bay City, Michigan to Ann Arbor to hear President Lyndon Johnson announce the Great Society.

 

How many of you remember President Lyndon Johnson who took over the top office when President Kennedy was assassinated?

He was a bigger than life figure in national politics who gained notoriety when he was a United States Senator from Texas because he was able to amass power and use it to accomplish his goals.  He was also the father of the Great Society which was supposed to end poverty and inequality in this country.

A month before I graduated from high school in 1964, he came to the University of Michigan stadium to announce his vision for a better life for those who were poor and without power.

My high school--T.L. Handy in Bay City about a hundred miles north of Ann Arbor--got tickets for the event and took students to it in buses.  I went and I saved the ticket stub.  

In the same year, I met U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater who was campaigning in our area from the back of a train caboose.  I was in the background of a picture published in Life magazine.