George McGovern Receiving Hospice Care

[Tom Rinaldo]

89. My encounter with George McGovern

I posted this somewhere else a week or two again in reply to a thread on an Op-Ed McGovern had written, which was an overview of his political life. I didn't know he was ill then:

I met George McGovern while he was gearing up but before getting the Democratic nomination. I was a college student and an anti-war activist. McGovern spoke at my University and was well received. He didn't rush off campus immediately. I and a small group of other activists had set up a tent as a protest focal point on a central grassy area central to the campus. After McGovern's speech we made it back there to reassemble. It wasn't too long after when we looked over to see George McGovern strolling over toward us, without staff. He greeted us, shook our hands, thanked us for our activism, and could not have been more gracious or sincere. He was very much a man of my father's generation, and he looked it. Unlike RFK there was absolutely nothing "cutting edge" about the way he manifest. He was heartland America, naturally at home in staid and conservative attire. We were every bit as straggly as any Yippie one might have encountered at the time. None of that mattered in the slightest. The connection we felt with George McGovern that day was as warm and natural as a family reunion.

That was the moment when I began to truly admire him, and nothing has happened since then to do anything other than deeper the admiration I still have for George McGovern. That brief meeting taught me something deep and very important on a level that penetrated well beyond words. Remember, those were still the days of the "anti-establishment" "counter culture". I may not have admitted it consciously at the time, but I was subtly alienated from people who came across to me as mainstream and traditional in appearance and lifestyle. George McGovern was a light year.away from me in conventional experiences, and a massively significant generation removed from my late 60's centric world view, But I knew he was my brother none the less, and from that moment on I never viewed the world as narrowly again