for three miles, smiling at astonishes drivers along the way. he liked tinkering. when he was a one-star general living in fort carson, colorado, he became fascinated with mechanical adding machines. he would buy them by the palet at auction and try to get the machines to work. at one point there were so many adding machines, he had to store them in the garage refrigerator. i suppose every general needs a signature colin powell had adding machines. his zest for life derived from his endless passion for people. he was genuinely interested in everyone he met. he love a hot dog vendor, a banker, and a student as much as any world leader.
in fact, he wrote two speeches, one in which he was going to announce his intention to run for the presidency, that he was going to deliver to his beloved alma mater, city college of new york, and one he announced he was not going to run. in the end, he delivered the second speech saying running for office was not for him. there s his widow, who also suffered from covid as did her late husband. thankfully it was very brief. general, you know alma powell. my wife remembers because she was involved in all of the branches of the military. i m thinking of the reflection she has today of not only, you know, the loss of her husband but i m sure she s reflecting back on those 40-plus years in the military, the moves that we
the national cathedral, it brings back memories of i think it s fair to say the good old days when democrats and republicans worked and talked to each other and weren t always hammering away. feels very pre-2016, doesn t it. it also speaks to, as john said, colin powell, the politician, the military officer, but it also speaks to colin powell the man, who we were joking that his superpower was connecting with people, that as soon as you met him, within a few seconds he would be asking, well, what about you? i think what you re seeing here today is that connection that he made with so many people. he also never forgot where he came from. yes, he was ambitious, yes, he rose high, but he would be the first to say i m from the bronx, i went to city college. he never got too big to get
excited. colin powell said his first thought was you can t do this, i spent my entire life training to fight the soviets. what did he do? he learned to do with a new challenge. tim mentioned we don t focus on good news. doesn t get enough attention. think about what happened. the soviet union collapsed. the iron curtain fell. lithuania, latvia, poland, the czech republic, and nothing happened. nothing bad happened, right? because this remarkable national security team managed the world from the reagan administration into the bush administration, and he was part of that because he was optimistic. he used to always joke, all my training was suddenly useless. but he learnedadapted. we re looking at former presidents obama and bush, formeform former first ladies. hillary clinton there. bill clinton was in the hospital so he s recovering, i m sure he s fine. i suspect out of an abundance of caution he decided that maybe he
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