Monday, August 16, 2004
LB in '04 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
To counteract Senator Kerry's Band of Brothers, the Bush-Cheney campaign is pulling out all the stops. A dozen of the President's Yale fraternity brothers have volunteered to be hired to talk about the President and relate their personal stories of young George Bush. We were lucky enough to land an interview with one of these men.
Lawrence Beckwith is the CEO of Beckwith Insurance, in Hartford Connecticut. He was one year ahead of the president at Yale. Excerpts from the interview are printed below.
Oak Tree that Bush never crashed into
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To counteract Senator Kerry's Band of Brothers, the Bush-Cheney campaign is pulling out all the stops. A dozen of the President's Yale fraternity brothers have volunteered to be hired to talk about the President and relate their personal stories of young George Bush. We were lucky enough to land an interview with one of these men.
Lawrence Beckwith is the CEO of Beckwith Insurance, in Hartford Connecticut. He was one year ahead of the president at Yale. Excerpts from the interview are printed below.
LB: Thanks for being here, Mr. Beckwith.
Beckwith: Right. Where's my check?
off record/on record
LB: What type of man was George W. Bush?
Beckwith: He was a great guy. You could really depend on him. Everyone looked up to him. A real leader.
LB: What are you reading from?
off record/on record
LB: Describe his leadership. How was he a leader?
Beckwith: He was a leader. He led. That was his leadership. He once said, 'a leader leads, an unleader doesn't'. He was right! Once, we were all sitting around the frat house. We had the munchies. It was George who said, "lets go get some donuts". And you know what? We went to get some donuts. Plus, he had a car. So that helped.
LB: Did he possess resolve in college? What was his will like?
Beckwith: He had resolve. And will. Both were firm. Really firm.
LB: Did he ever save your life?
Beckwith: You bet. We all used to go out on Saturday nights. You know, for some youthful indiscretion. George always drove. Well, there used to be a huge oak tree in front of the frat house. Well, we'd get home pretty late on those nights. George never once drove the car into that tree. He practically saved my life every weekend. And I'll always be grateful.
LB: Now, can you tell us....
Beckwith: He also pulled a freshman to safety one night under a hail of bing cherries. See, it was pledge week. The pledges had to strip naked, stick bing cherries up their butts and then try to drop them into shot glasses. If you couldn't do it, the brothers would start flinging cherries at you. This one kid couldn't get it into the shot glass and the cherries really flew. He fell down and started crying. George, with no thought to his own safety, pulled him to safety. It was like a hornet's nest in there that night.
LB: Do you really think that qualifies as a ....
Beckwith: Have you ever been on the receiving end of a bing cherry, tough guy? It stings. And it stains.
LB: What else can you tell us about our President in his youth?
Beckwith: He was always concerned about our safety. He once learned that Delta Epsilon Sigma was designing and stockpiling water balloons to use against us or to give to another frat to use against us. He organized a coalition of brothers to raid the Delta's.
LB: So he led a raid....
Beckwith: Well, he didn't lead the raid. He organized it but then he got a headache and stayed behind.
LB: Was it a success?
Beckwith: Hell yes! We didn't actually find balloons but they had a faucet. You know, for water. Water is a key ingredient for water balloons. So we figured they had plans to attack us. But you know, we were never attacked by water balloons so you gotta call it a success.
LB: Thank you for your time.
Beckwith: Why do you hate America?
