

This is the famous airplane which got me in trouble with the Secret Service. I hired the plane to fly over the farm of Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Gene Branstool located in Utica, Ohio with a banner that read “Licking County is Bush Country.” The stop at the Branstool farm was the first stop after Bill Clinton’s nomination for President by the Democratic Party. Clinton was seriously delayed in his departure from the farm because the plane had to cleared from the airspace lest it pose a threat. President Bush personally intervened with the Secret Service for me and, thereafter, he and Mrs. Bush referred to me as the “airplane guy.”

Everything I have ever done, my entire family has always been present to support me. The current campaign is no exception. I don’t have to talk about family values – because I live those values every day with my amazing family. We are all very, very close.

Picture from the floor of the 1992 Republican National Convention. I was privileged to have access to all parts of the Convention Floor, platform, and VIP areas. I will never forget the famous folks I bumped into: Arnold, Charlton Heston, Sonny Bono, Gerald McRaney, Connie Chung, Dan Rather, and so many others.

I am a student and lover of history. I met South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond at the 1992 Convention and he was gracious enough to carry on a conversation with me about his run for President on the Dixiecrats Ticket in the 1948 election against Harry S. Truman. I may not agree with his past segregationist views at all – but Thurmond was a legend and changed his mind about many things at the end of his life. We are all entitled to reflect back and change our minds about things with the wisdom that time and experience brings to us all.

By pure chance, I happened to be on the wooden stairs at the back of the platform at the 1992 Republican Presidential Convention in Houston, Texas when a limousine pulled up with obvious Secret Service protection. I had been conveying a written message from Robert Taft to the platform chairman. I was ordered to freeze in place on the steps by the Secret Service. Two Secret Service Agents literally carried President Reagan up the step wooden steps (there was no elevator) and when they got to my step, Mr. Reagan fell backward, and they almost dropped him. I reached out to steady him and he leaned into me and said, “Thank you young man.” It was the most thrilling moment of my entire political life.

My great grandfather and great uncles were all Ohio coal miners who died of Black Lung Disease. When I was in Poland they allowed me and several of my colleagues to go down into an active coal mine and see what it was like to work in that industry. Thy have no liability laws in Poland and so if you are stupid enough to go down into the and mine and it collapses – well you cannot sue anyone. You have only yourself to blame. I will never forget the small elevator that fits just two people squeezed together tightly and its descent into ever hotter temperatures. Hell must truly be in the center of the Earth. There was a partial coal vein collapse while were down at the extraction site which scared me to death. I could not see anything for about a half hour and I was told to just run in Polish and then in English. I told the coal miners that I was voting for a huge pay raise for each of them and that I needed to get to the surface.

George H.W. Bush & George W. Bush

George W. Bush









































