Friday, April 11, 2008
Tom Brokaw, former NBC Nightly News anchor, started his speech Thursday at the Dole Institute of politics with four words: “Mario Chalmers for president.”
On a more serious note, Brokaw called for students to get involved in the history of their time at a Robert J. Dole Institute speech Thursday.
He said the Dole institute was what this nation needed to move forward in a time that paralleled the 1940s and 1960s in importance.
Tom Brokaw, former NBC Nightly News anchor, speaks about his book "Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today" at the Dole Institute of Politics yesterday afternoon.
“Students and citizens can come here to learn the reward and honor of public service,” Brokaw said.
Brokaw said his parents raised him on values that came out of the Great Depression. He said humility, compromise and service to country, like that in the 1930s and ‘40s, was what America needed to address its problems today.
Brokaw said the saddest part of politics today was that senators did not get the chance to sit down and reflect because special interest groups demand so much of their time. He said that even in election coverage the real issues were not being addressed.
“There is too much commentary and too little coverage,” Brokaw said.
“Unfortunately a lot of coverage has been reduced to gotcha’s,” he said, referring to the quarreling between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Clarissa Unger, Colby junior and Dole Institute intern, said that Brokaw’s genuine attitude surprised her.
“He was just so real,” Unger said. “He walked into the room and immediately wanted to know who everyone was individually.”
1944 KU Alumna Scottie Lingelbach asked Tom Brokaw, her old friend, to come speak in Kansas.
“It is nice that with all the big names he knows in politics, he can still find time to be the friend of a little old white haired lady from Kansas.”
Lingelbach was involved in politics during her college years.
“I told the UDK in 1944 that I was going into the service because I didn’t want to be just another pin-up girl. I wanted to make a difference,” Lingelbach said. “And they used that quote,” she added.
Brokaw said students should get to know their parents’ generation to better understand their own. He said a woman told him that she never got along with her father until she read Brokaw’s book, “The Greatest Generation,” which details the mindset of World War II.
“For the first time she was able to go back and actually meet her father,” Brokaw said.
Unger said that Brokaw’s visit was special because he has had this kind of influence on many people.
“He’s just done so much,” Unger said. “I remember listening to him every night with my father growing up.”
Brokaw said he could only stay for a few hours because, although he was retired, he still had a hard time saying no when it came to important events.
—Edited by Nick Mangiaracina
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