While looking for news about the tornadoes that struck Freeborn and Faribault counties, I logged onto the Tribune’s website and was pleased to see Ed Shannon’s article about Tribune photographer Robert Church’s photos of the visits of GOP presidential candidates Tom Dewey and Dwight Eisenhower to Albet Lea in 1948 and 1952, respectively.

I was a 16-year-old boy in Blue Earth when I went with my father to see Eisenhower. Later, as a reporter for the St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press and then its Washington correspondent, followed by a stint as Vice President Walter Mondale’s press secretary and then editor of The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress and the federal government, I’ve had the privilege of covering every president from LBJ to Barack Obama, including seeing Jimmy Carter up close in the White House. But I always remembered my first glimpse of a future president in Albert Lea. Thanks for the article looking back on history.

Albert Eisele

Washington, D.C.