Political Quotes

“If I could have the indulgence of the leader, I would like to share a personal anecdote that does not relate to voting but relates to smudges and things that may occur from time to time. For military personnel, as you know, some of the ballots were disqualified because of a smudge mark or something not clearly readable. In 1945, when my father was killed at the end of the Second World War in a plane crash in the Chesapeake Bay--serving in all of his combat missions, he was killed in a military aircraft that went down in the Chesapeake Bay--his body was recovered 2 days later. Of course, in the recovery of his body, they recovered his wallet. My mother--who was then a young widow with two boys--had to follow the limousine from Virginia back to the funeral parlor in Trenton, NJ, where my father was buried. She had no money for gasoline because we could not use it then; you had to use stamps. The only stamps she had were the stamps from my father's wallet. After filling up with gas, when she went into the gas station to present those stamps, the attendant would not take the stamps because he said he could not read them; they were smudged. My mother never forgot that story. Until almost the day she died, she talked about it, about how much that hurt her, that no matter how much pressure was put on that attendant, he refused to accept those stamps. So I think we have to err on the side of caution for our military. They go through a lot. There is a lot of sacrifice.…”