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People who know Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba know that his political heros were Humbert Humphrey and Edward Kennedy. Listen to Gluba long enough and he’ll end up quoting Humphrey. He also ran Kennedy’s Scott County presidential campaign in 1980.
So strong did Gluba feel about the two that he’s tried to pay his respects at both their funerals, Humphrey’s in 1978 and Kennedy’s this weekend.
It’s not like an Iowa mayor earns invitations to such events, so it requires some mettle. And some luck.
Gluba may have both working for him.
On Friday, he took an early flight to Boston and had the fortune of running into Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, who was on a connecting flight to Boston for the services himself. Gluba is hoping that will give him an entree to pay his respects at Friday’s private service.
Culver’s father, former Sen. John Culver of Iowa was a good friend and a former roommate of Kennedy’s. He’s in Boston, too, Gluba says.
If it happens, it will be somewhat of a repeat of Humphrey’s service, when the mayor says he got in then through the auspices of then-U.S. Sen. Dick Clark, an Iowa Democrat. Gluba says he ran into Clark on a connecting flight to Minnesota on the way to the Humphrey service, and the late senator was good enough to temporarily make him (or at least call him) a member of his staff.
Gluba says he sat next to Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.
The mayor says he’ll let us know what happens in Boston.
You REALLY know you’re old when you can remember (vividly) the Cuban missile crisis, JFK’s assassination and burial. I was just finishing “Statistical Quality Control” at the ammunition school at Savanna Ordnance Depot. We had finished a test late in the p.m. when the news came, so we thought it was terribly chicken—- of them to keep us until 4:15 (regular quitting time).