On May 27, 2011 will be the 100th Birthday of the late Hubert H. Humphrey II who passed away on January 13, 1978. Being from Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey went on to become a United States Senator, Vice President and the Democratic nominee for president in 1968. My memory goes back to when I was a boy of twelve in 1948 when my father was campaigning than for Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey in his first race for the United States Senate against the incumbent Republican Joseph Ball. As a young boy I recall President Harry S. Truman coming to my hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota by train on his whistle stop tour in the 1948 campaign with a huge rally at the Hibbing Memorial Building. Hubert Humphrey was with the president on that spendid fall day in 1948. My interest in politics was born on that day so many years ago. HHH was a mentor to so many such as Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, Orville Freeman, John Blatnik and so many others who became national figures in their own right.
The pundits of that day had New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey the Republican nominee for president winning that election which was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune that Governor Dewey was the winner. President Truman prevailed as well as Senator-Elect Humphrey and history was made. I recall many speeches that HHH made over the years dealing with civil rights, labor rights, education and health care to just name a few. He was always there for working people and he never forgot his roots in the Minnesota labor movement. His accomplishments are many when he would tell the story that it took him from 1949 until 1964 to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and Medicare also in 1965. The Vietnam War may have cost him the presidency in 1968 although looking back now we would not have had Watergate and the resignation of a president. He was later elected a senator from Minnesota in 1972 and served until his passing in 1978.
In September at the 1977 Minnesota AFL-CIO Convention held in St Paul, Minnesota was the last public appearance by Senator Humphrey and I was there as a delegate. My thoughts went back to 1948 with my father to that first campaign. If you talk to anyone that was there that day there was not a dry eye in the place as the dying senator gave his final public speech to the Minnesota labor movement. I often wonder what he would say today about the attack on working people and their values. I do know this he would be our champion! The senator passed away four months later.
Irony struck once again. Senator Humphrey was returned to Minnesota to lie in state at the State Capitol. It was a cold winter night as a crowd gathered outside the Capitol to pay their respects. At my side that evening was my son Jeff at the age of twelve years who was born in 1966. He still talks about that night even to this day the same as I did some thirty years earlier.
In Minnesota Hubert Humphrey was known as the "Happy Warrior". "It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children, those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." HHH
The pundits of that day had New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey the Republican nominee for president winning that election which was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune that Governor Dewey was the winner. President Truman prevailed as well as Senator-Elect Humphrey and history was made. I recall many speeches that HHH made over the years dealing with civil rights, labor rights, education and health care to just name a few. He was always there for working people and he never forgot his roots in the Minnesota labor movement. His accomplishments are many when he would tell the story that it took him from 1949 until 1964 to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and Medicare also in 1965. The Vietnam War may have cost him the presidency in 1968 although looking back now we would not have had Watergate and the resignation of a president. He was later elected a senator from Minnesota in 1972 and served until his passing in 1978.
In September at the 1977 Minnesota AFL-CIO Convention held in St Paul, Minnesota was the last public appearance by Senator Humphrey and I was there as a delegate. My thoughts went back to 1948 with my father to that first campaign. If you talk to anyone that was there that day there was not a dry eye in the place as the dying senator gave his final public speech to the Minnesota labor movement. I often wonder what he would say today about the attack on working people and their values. I do know this he would be our champion! The senator passed away four months later.
Irony struck once again. Senator Humphrey was returned to Minnesota to lie in state at the State Capitol. It was a cold winter night as a crowd gathered outside the Capitol to pay their respects. At my side that evening was my son Jeff at the age of twelve years who was born in 1966. He still talks about that night even to this day the same as I did some thirty years earlier.
In Minnesota Hubert Humphrey was known as the "Happy Warrior". "It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children, those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." HHH
