Brazos Past: On the campaign trail
By Terri Jo Ryan
Tribune-Herald staff writer
With the Texas Republican and Democratic primaries just around the corner, thoughts turn to previous visits to the Waco area by presidents and presidential candidates:
* President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) made at least three trips to Waco. Twice he came as president, making a re-election campaign stop at Katy Park in 1904 and speaking to the Young Men’s Business League in 1905. He also came in 1911, when he was pondering a run for president in 1912 under his own Bull Moose Party.
* In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman received a golden membership card from Karem Shrine Potentate Lee Lockwood in ceremonies that preceded the president’s speaking to the convocation at Baylor University.
He also received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Baylor President Pat Neff, a move that irritated trustees and eventually led to Neff’s retirement in 1948. Several trustees opposed granting Truman the honorary degree because of his salty language and failure to uphold certain biblical standards in his daily life.
* President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the May 1956 Baylor commencement ceremony and lauded the graduates: “You are joined with millions of dedicated men and women at home, and linked in partnership with hundreds of millions of like-minded people around the globe. So believing and so united, you constitute the mightiest temporal force for good on this globe of ours.”
The president, a native Texan, received an honorary doctor of laws as well.
Additional sources: Handbook of Texas Online, Time.com, TrumanLibrary.org, EisenhowerMemorial.org.
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