People You Meet In Your Lifetime

Everyone has a different life on this old mudball called Earth and so it stands to reason that everyone meets different people.

Folks that travel a lot in their life, get to meet many different and interesting individuals. Those folks that stay in one spot most of their life only get to meet strangers that are passing through the area.

I had the pleasure of one such meeting in high school. We all learned in school that Pat Nixon was born in Ely. Her husband, Richard Nixon was the Vice President and was on a campaign tour of Nevada. They stopped in Ely and he gave a speech on a platform that was built under the streetlight on main street by the Hotel Nevada. The White Pine High School band played a small concert for him and afterwards, we all filed by him and shook hands with him. Gee, there I was a McGill heathen shaking hands with the vice president.

A few years later I was doing some research at the University of Utah Medical School and was working out of a lab where the U. of U. Library now sits. I had just left the building and was walking across the dirt parking lot to my car, when a big black limo pulled up and stopped next to me. The rear window rolled down and a guy asked me if I knew where the Student Union building was located. He stuck his hand out the window and we shook hands. He said “My name is Jack Kennedy and I am giving a speech there this afternoon”. I pointed to the building and he said, “Thanks for the directions.” He was just beginning his run for the presidency.

This was quite an occasion for me. Not everyone gets to tell a future U.S. President where to go!!!!

In 1966, I was working for Van Waters and Rogers in San Francisco and was a traveling salesman, covering California from the Golden Gate Bridge to Oregon. We sold lab equipment and chemicals to schools, industry and hospitals. California was just building several Junior Colleges and I got to bid on all the lab stuff. I remember Chico State, College of the Redwoods, Cotati, College of the Siskiyous etc, etc.

One time I was just coming out of a special mental hospital, where mental patients with severe physical deformities were being treated.

I had just started out the front door when several vehicles pulled up to the curb. A door opened on a big limo and a guy jumped out and started running for the door. I thought it might be a doctor and so I held the door for him. He stopped and shook my hand and said, “Thanks”. Right behind him were several reporters and camera men. It was, of course Governor, Ronald Reagan. That night on the TV evening news there was an article about Reagan paying a surprise visit to a mental hospital. He had heard some sickening stories about that hospital and wanted to check it out for himself.

So, I held the door for a future US President.

On June 6, 1968, I was on a sales trip to the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California and was staying at a motel on a main street. There was a parade passing by and I saw an older car with a man sitting on the front fender. It was Robert F. Kennedy, and he was running for president. A woman next to me ran out and shook his hand. She told me later that she would never wash that hand again. I didn’t run out to shake his hand and later that night I wished I would have. He was on his way to the local airport and flew to LA, where Sirhan killed him.

I was able to see and do these things because I moved around a lot.