By Bruce B. Brugmann, writing as a certified Rock Rapids, Iowa, Democrat and liberal
I called Dave Dietz just before the Iowa caucus vote to review a significant event in our political lives in the early l950s in Rock Rapids, Iowa.
The event was a speech in nearby Sioux Falls, South Dakota, by Adlai Stevenson, the former gentleman farmer from Bloomington, Illinois, who was running for president against Dwight Eisenhower. Dave and I had gone through school from kindergarten through high school and were probably about as political as anybody in our high school at that time. And so we jumped at the idea of going to hear Stevenson with my grandfather, C. C. Brugmann, who with my father were two of the only Democrats in our conservative northwestern Iowa town.
Stevenson gave a splendid speech that impressed us both. But it was his opening that we remember so clearly.