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August 16, 2006
Jerry and Me
As I slave away on the Presidents' book (new deadline: October 15) and read in the news that Jerry Ford is in the hospital, it seems like a good time to share piece of video I recently unearthed.
It all began with a conversation I had with Debbie Padgett from the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation a few weeks ago when the Godspeed was in town.
Debbie: Rick, I want to ask you a question, but I don't want to offend you.
Rick: It's hard to offend me, go ahead.
Debbie: Well, IT has to do with age.I was watching C-Span the other night, and they were showing a Jerry Ford news conference from New Hampshire in 1976, and someone named Rick Beyer asked a question, and I thought it looked kind of like you, thinner, and I wondered if that could be you, but I didn't know if you were old enough for that to be you.
Rick: (Shaking his head in amazement) Wow. Yes, I'm old enough, and yes that's me.
I couldn't believe it. I remembered attending a Jerry Ford news conference as a reporter at WDCR, the Dartmouth student radio station, but I didn't remember asking him a question. Neer mind the fact that this was showing up on C-Span 30 years later, or that someone I know happened to catch it.
To make a long story short, I tracked down the video, and there I am: skinny, with huge glasses, wearing the clothes and hairstyle dubbed the "Rhode Island look" by my firends Peter Hirshberg and Neil McCarthy, asking the president about abortion.
Here's the exchange. My question is, which of us is more wooden?
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:27 AM | Comments (1)