Monday, July 13, 2009

A Man's Reach -- A Transforming Life, 41: Two Governors

Elmer L. Andersen and Nelson Rockefeller

"On October 25 [1962], my campaign [for governor] was interrupted by events far from Minnesota. I received an urgent call from the White House. President Kennedy had summoned the Civil Defense Committee of the National Governor's Association to a meeting that afternoon, to discuss the crisis that had erupted with the discovery that the Soviet Union had installed thirty missiles in Cuba, ninety miles away from the Florida coast….I was one of the ten members of the Civil Defense Committee, which was chaired by my good friend Nelson Rockefeller, Republican governor of New York. Nelson and I had become something of a team among the governors since my first governors' association meeting. If I was doing something, I wanted Nelson involved. If he was chair of something, he wanted me on the committee."

Courtesy Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Family

"A Man's Reach -- A Transforming Life" is on display through August 15 in the Exhibit Gallery, Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus.

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