Recalling Landmark Visits to Widener-PMC
December 7, 2011
What do Cecil B. DeMille, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Bob Hope, Bruce Springsteen, and Barack Obama have in common? All have appeared on the Main Campus of Pennsylvania Military College or Widener.
Those are some of the ones we know about. Help us find others. Please send us your memories of notables visiting campus – be they politicians, military leaders, artists, entertainers, writers, scientists, or others of influence. You can send a note via the comments field of this blog post, on Facebook, or in an e-mail to jsstarnes@widener.edu. (And make sure you tell us the year of their visit. )
There is more information on the visits by DeMille, Eisenhower (pictured in 1963 with PMC cadet John Lance Geoghegan), Goldwater, and Springsteen in the Connections Timeline in the Digital Collections of the Wolfgram Memorial Library’s Widener University Archives.
-GEN Creighton Abrams — Military Weekend 1964-1965
-MG George S. Patton IV (son of WWI GEN Patton) — Then a Lieutenant Colonel — Military Weekend 1964-1965
-LT GEN James Doolittle (Leader of the WWII Tokyo Raid) — Commencement 1964 (with SEN Goldwater)
LT GEN Bruce Palmer, JR — Commander XVIII Airborne — Military Weekend 1966-1967
Arthur M Schlesinger Jr spoke at PMC in the spring of 1966, perhaps in March. He spoke personally afterward to a very small group of interested cadets. Having recently left the the highest circles of the U.S. government, it was amazing to realize that he did not support the recently announced expansion of military effort in Viet Nam.