A while back I got an email from an alum wondering if any standing presidents had been on the Puget Sound campus in previous years. JFK was at Cheney Field in 1963 as part of a joint convocation of UPS and PLU, but I don't believe he came to our school. One well known presidential visit, however, was Eisenhower, who spoke at CPS (as we were back then) in 1958. Here's an excerpt from his speech:
In expressing my appreciation to the College of Puget Sound for their great courtesy in allowing us to use this hall, I want to tell you that last evening I spent a great deal of time with two of your alumni, and I learned about your undefeated football team. So I guess it's in order for me to extend felicitations.
...To act wisely and effectively, at this most important time in the history of American education, our people must be alerted, even aroused, to the problems before us. I sometimes wonder whether we really realize how extraordinarily complicated our lives have become-even within the life that has been lived by the youngest of those here present-with radar, the jet airplane, with every kind of terrible bomb that the world can build. We have come to a time when this understanding must be pushed faster. Man's scientific genius seems to have out-raced his own intelligence and judgment in handling the products of his own inventiveness. This is a gap which we must overcome.
Read the whole thing here.
