Centenarians reflect on elections past
Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008 3:01 PM by Ian Sager
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John Rutherford
From John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Centenarian LaGrand Nielsen, who was Dwight Eisenhower's dentist in the Army, remembers the nation's 34th president as a good man with a great set of teeth.
"I met Ike in 1939 at Fort Ord, Calif., and that's where I got to know him pretty well," LaGrand, 101, of Sandy, Utah, said recently. "Checked his teeth a couple of times and cleaned them. Had a beautiful set of teeth. Wonderful fellow. Wonderful officer. He was a lieutenant colonel when I met him, but he ended up a 5-star general."
LaGrand saw Ike again in Washington, D.C., during World War II. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie invited LaGrand and his wife Beatrice to their quarters in Bethesda, Md.
"We spent the afternoon visiting for a couple of hours and had lunch, and we just had a wonderful visit," LaGrand said. "We talked about life and military life and what it had done for him, and I was a career man then myself. I was a captain, maybe a major at the time, and he was a general.
"Mamie and my wife got along real well," LaGrand said. "Mamie was very humble and sweet."
LaGrand last saw Eisenhower after the war when Ike talked to LaGrand's Boy Scout troop on Governors Island in New York City.
"He said the one thing he missed in his life when he was growing up, and he was raised in Kansas, you know, was that he was never in the Boy Scout program," LaGrand said. "He had nothing but praise for the Boy Scouts."
LaGrand had nothing but praise for Ike, whom he supported for president in 1952 and 1956.
"He was just one of the boys," LaGrand said. "He was just one of us. He was very humble, very courteous. He didn't say one negative word about anybody, and I admired that, and he had a good set of teeth."
Louise Ashton, 102, of Albany, Ga., a lifelong Democrat, also liked Ike.
"The only time I was really, really threatening to vote Republican was when Eisenhower ran," Louise said. "I thought he was a very smart man, and I appreciated what he had done for our country."
But Ike didn't get her vote, because he wasn't a Democat. I asked Louise how long she'd been voting the straight Democratic ticket.
"Well, let's see, since around 1924," she said.
Why did you always vote Democratic?
"Because my daddy did," she said with a laugh. "I thought he was a very smart man."
Why did he vote Democratic?
"Well, now, that I really don't know," she said. "But I know we all followed in his footsteps, and he lived to be 102."
So you did what your dad told you to do?
"Right, right," she said. "That's the way it used to be. It isn't that way anymore."
With her father no longer around to guide her, Louise isn't sure how she's going to vote this year.
"I've got my absentee ballot on my desk, and I am still pondering and listening and reading and trying to determine who is the best person to vote for," she said. "I didn't know I was going to live this long to make this big a decision."
One centenarian with no such doubts is John "Cas" Casparis, 100, of Austin, Texas. He's voted for Democrats all of his life, except once, in 1928, when Democrat Al Smith and Republican Herbert Hoover were running against each other for president.
"I voted against Al Smith, the Democrat, because living up there in Johnson City, Texas, in those small towns, you get prejudice, and I'm a Protestant, and Al Smith was a Catholic, and I voted a prejudice vote that I'll never live down," Cas said. "I'll regret that until I die."
So how are you voting this year?
"I'll pull one lever," he said. "The Democrat, yes, sir."
Photos: Dentist LaGrand Nielsen at Fort Ord, Calif., circa 1939 (family photo); Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and wife Mamie smile at each other, 1945 (AP Photo); Louise Ashton, 102, in 2008 (family photo).
LaGrand, Louise and Cas were three of the centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's TODAY show. If you know of any centenarians who've had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about them in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.
