As a high school senior I had the honor of conversing with Senator Hubert Humphrey, a rising star from my dad’s native state. I was general chairman of the Mirror Youth Forum in Manhattan; and he was keynote speaker at this major conference with delegates from all over the U.S. and the world.
During our lunch in a hotel ballroom, he asked where I had applied to college. After the meal I gave a kid’s speech about the “bandwagon of moral integrity” and he spoke like a possible future President of the U.S. We got our picture taken for the New York Daily Mirror.
A week later I was surprised to get an envelope from his office, containing carbon copies of letters the Senator had signed and sent to the admission offices of the colleges that I had named at lunch. I was fascinated to read that I had always dreamed of attending Yale, but alarmed, then amused, to see that the letter was mistakenly addressed to Wesleyan. Wesleyan was told that I had my heart set on Harvard, and Harvard that I had always wanted to go to Yale!
At that point I wondered whether, with staff-work like this, Humphrey would ever be President, much as I liked him and appreciated his initiative. I hope the admissions people got a chuckle. The interviewer at the college that I eventually chose didn't mention having received any letter from a politician, so probably no harm was done.
As an undergraduate on the student paper, I became quite interested in youth service abroad, and was struck in 1960 by the way Humphrey proposed a national program for this kind of service before Kennedy did, but lost their party’s nomination. It was the winner in the general election who went on to launch the Peace Corps.