OK,  after all these years, I've gotta share this one.

It was October 1960.  John F. Kennedy was running for president.  Mark Josefson and I were on the debate team (and had othewise been engaged in various nefarious activities over the years).  Jack Kennedy was going to appear and give a speech at the DFL Bean Feed at the Minneapolis Auditorium.  Somebody got ahold of a bunch of tickets to the bean feed.  About two carloads of us decided to go to the bean feed and listen to Kennedy.  I can no longer remember exactly who the participants were, but I remember that Mark Josefson was one of us.  Other likely suspects were Jim Conover, Jan deVries, Bob Benson, Bill Fleeson, Tom Polivka, maybe Allan Odden.  Most are still able to post a denial.  We got in a couple of cars and drove downtown.  We found that you couldn't get within half a block of the Minneapolis Auditorium because a huge crowd had showed up  We confered. 

We knew Kennedy was staying at the Leamington Hotel.  We decided to go over there to try to see him.  We got to the hotel and found a huge crowd in front of the main entrance on Third Street, waiting for Kennedy. 

Somebody had the brilliant idea of going into the hotel through a side door to see if we could meet Kennedy.  We did.  A couple of people (don't remember who, but it wasn't me) took the elevator up to the top floor where Kennedy was staying.  They wandered through the corridor looking for the Presidential Suite.  They ran into Orville Freeman, who was either the current Minnesota Governor or a recent past Governor- and later the Secretary of Agriculture in the Kennedy administration.  He told them that Kenndy was resting and they should go down to street level and wait by the elevators for him to come down on the way to the Auditorium. 

Whoever it was that spoke to Freeman came down to street level and told the rest of us what Freeman had said.  We decided to wait for Kennedy by the elevators. Since we came from inside the hotel instead of through the front door, we were able to do so.  

That year, trench coats were in style.  We were all wearing tan trench coats.  At some point, Mark Josefson walked from the elevators out the front door of the Leamington, took off his hat, and waved to the crowd.  The crowd thought he was someone important and gave him a huge cheer. 

Mark came back in and we resumed waiting for Kennedy.

At length, Kennedy emerged from an elevator, accompanied by all of the DFL bigwigs of the time, including Orville Freeman and Hubert Humphrey.  They made their  way from the elevators to the front entrance, down the steps and into convertables waiting to ferry them to the Bean Feed.  This was well before the Secret Service provided protection to presidential candidates and there was no visible security.

The bunch of us simply fell into line behind the bigwigs and marched out the door to the cars.  We lined up on either side of Kennedy's car (a white 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertable), and walked with the car to the Bean Feed.  Each of us shook Kennedy's hand several times while progressing through the huge crowd.  When we got to the auditorium, there was pandemonium and we got separated from Kennedy and the motorcade. 

We were in awe of what we had managed to accomplish on the spur of the moment.  One of the high points, however, was remembering Mark Josfson standing on the front steps of the Leamington, waving his hat at the crowd and getting a huge ovation.

Though I did not know Mark really well, he and I were in some classes together through the years in Hopkins High School. As I remember, he was easy going and seemed to enjoy school.  Remembering Mark as those gather now for the 55th reunion.