COUNTING PRESIDENTS
By Dan Miller
February 6, 2007
There have been 12 U.S. presidents (so far) during my lifetime.
More than 45 years ago, during the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race, I recall J.F.K. saying -- in sort of an off-handed remark -- that he'd lived through seven presidents.
That got my attention.
"Wow" I thought, "that's a lot."
At that time, only 3 men had been president during my life....
Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower.... and I had no recollection of F.D.R.
Well, life goes on, and now I've lived through 12 different administrations.
Hopefully, I'll see many, many more.
The other day I started thinking.... how many of those 12 presidents have I actually seen in person?
Well, the answer is six.
The first was Dwight Eisenhower.
Quite often, he would come to my hometown to play golf.
There's even a little bungalow on the grounds at the Augusta National they still call "Mamie's Cabin."
I had one extremely close encounter with Ike.
I was assisting a man who was showing films of past Master's Tournaments on a screen we set up on a patio there at the Augusta National.
For several hours, I was within just a few feet of the president, listening -- as best I could -- to his (seemingly to me, rather dull) conversation.
It was also in Augusta where I saw Lyndon Johnson.
He came there in the mid-1960s and spoke to a large gathering in front of the county courthouse.
I was part of that large gathering.
Richard Nixon was the third president I saw.
He came to Nashville for the grand opening of the new Opry House. I didn't have the best seats in the house, but I was there, in the balcony.
You may recall, it was the time Nixon took Roy Acuff's yo-yo. That Nixon was a hoot.
George H.W. Bush was my fourth presidential encounter.... though he was vice-president at the time.
He had come to Nashville for some event I was attending, and he made a brief speech.
I saw Ronald Reagan at a celebrity tennis tournament when I was living in California.
He and Nancy were sitting about 10 feet from me, right across the aisle.
He was then a "former president".... and, no, neither of us was playing in the tournament.
And the sixth president I saw was Bill Clinton.
He had come to Nashville to appear on a special edition of the Phil Donahue Show that was being broadcast from the Channel 4 studio.
The staff had been told that -- for security reasons -- our movement around the TV station would be restricted.... but I apparently didn't get the message.
I stood in a hallway downstairs while president Clinton walked within about 2 feet of me.
Now, if Al Gore had won the presidency, he would have moved to the top of my list for personal encounters with a president.
There've been many.
Heck, I even helped him polish some comedy material once when we were seated next to each other at a roast for former Nashvillian Mike Kettenring.
(But Gore didn't win.... so that only counts as a vice-presidential encounter.)
All of my presidential encounters pale when compared to the remarkable sighting made by my young daughter.
A year or so ago, McKensie was in Washington with her mother and they were having lunch at a restaurant somewhere near the White House.
Outside the window, they spotted the familiar presidential helicopter, heading toward the White House.
As you can imagine, most jaded Washingtonians don't even look twice.
But McKensie excitedly told her mother, "Hey look, it's George Washington's helicopter!"
Now that's an impressive presidential sighting!
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