I am pleased to introduce tonights speaker, neil oxman. Neil was born and raised in philadelphia. He spent much of his childhood in the stacks of the free branch of the library on 58th and baltimore avenue. Skipping ahead a few years, neil founded the Campaign Group in 1980, and since then, they have worked on more than 750 contested primaries and general elections across the United States. Among his clients have been former mayors Michael Nutter and current mayor jim kenney. He has also served on the free library of philadelphia board of trustees and the Free Library Foundation board of directors. I have known neil for almost 30 years, and he is one of the most fascinating and entertaining people i have ever met. He does not want me to say a lot about him tonight, so let me just say that he is a true renaissance man whose expertise covers a wide range of topics. He could stand up here tonight and entertain us, speaking about movies or about golf or about the history of philadelphia or
I am pleased to introduce tonights speaker, neil oxman. Neil was born and raised in philadelphia. He spent much of his childhood in the stacks of the free branch of the library on 58th and baltimore avenue. Skipping ahead a few years, neil founded the Campaign Group in 1980, and since then, they have worked on more than 750 contested primaries and general elections across the United States. Among his clients have been former mayors Michael Nutter and current mayor jim kenney. He has also served on the free library of philadelphia board of trustees and the Free Library Foundation board of directors. I have known neil for almost 30 years, and he is one of the most fascinating and entertaining people i have ever met. He does not want me to say a lot about him tonight, so let me just say that he is a true renaissance man whose expertise covers a wide range of topics. He could stand up here tonight and entertain us, speaking about movies or about golf or about the history of philadelphia or
people in little rock, and the night before school was to open, the good governor orville faubus comes on television and says that he s calling out the national guard to keep out out of school. and i m thinking oh, my goodness, you know, i m a senior. i want to graduate, and i m walking into this huge unknown. and that first day the pictures on the brochure of elizabeth and the mob behind her, it dawned on me that maybe this was something other than my going to school, that there s some other issues going on here, and that i said i wanted to be a part of the change in the south. well, my moment came. and for three weeks, in fact, most people didn t think eisenhower was going to step forward and do anything. i don t think up until the last month we were talking earlier, i had an opportunity to sit with herbert brownell back in the 80s, we were at the eisenhower eisenhower library. and i said, you know, eisenhower really didn t need to send 1,000 paratroopers with the 101st