© Mark Ollig
This column, initially written Feb. 26, 2007, is edited for today’s publication.
In December 1971, Democratic presidential candidate and former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was on the upper Midwest campaign trail in his second of five presidential attempts.
McCarthy placed second during the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary March 12, 1968, against the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson received 48 percent of the vote, while McCarthy captured 42 percent.
Johnson announced March 31, 1968, he would “neither seek nor accept” the Democratic nomination.
The New Hampshire presidential primary gave McCarthy’s campaign national momentum.
Still, in the end, Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota became the Democratic nominee to face Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1968.
While searching for column ideas, I discovered the Vanderbilt Television News Archives at http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu.
The Vanderbilt Television News Archives, located in Nashville, TN, is inside the Heard Library of Vanderbilt University.
They have a vast collection of nightly news programs broadcast by ABC, CBS, and NBC’s national television networks since Aug. 5, 1968.
The Vanderbilt News Archives also includes most major speeches given by US presidents and each Republican and Democratic political convention beginning in 1968.
Individuals may request to loan out broadcasts on VHS tapes for study, classroom instruction, and research – for a modest fee.
While I was browsing through the archives, looking at some of the news footage they had available, I suddenly remembered something about one of my siblings that directly linked Eugene McCarthy and the place he was campaigning in Minnesota Dec. 2, 1971.
Using Vanderbilt’s search engine, I was surprised when one result displayed a CBS Evening News broadcast featuring one of my siblings.
My family had known about the news broadcast, but never saw it.
Vanderbilt’s website did not allow online viewing; a person needed to rent a specific news segment on VHS tape.
“I have to order the tape for this segment,” I thought to myself with my eyes still fixed on the search result.
I did send for the VHS tape – all 5 minutes’ worth. Two weeks later, it arrived.
After putting the tape into my VHS player, I sat down and began to watch the Dec. 2, 1971, CBS News segment.
The picture and sound quality were excellent, although the film was in black-and-white.
After 2 minutes and 23 seconds, the newscast switched from Walter Cronkite to a CBS News reporter describing what is happening at a Minnesota college.
Eugene McCarthy is speaking from behind a podium in front of college students inside an auditorium in Mankato.
McCarthy was campaigning Dec. 2, 1971, at Mankato State College, which my brother attended.
After McCarthy’s speech, the television camera switched outside the auditorium, where many college students gathered.
CBS News reporter Jeff Williams is interviewing a young college student by the name of Tom Ollig.
My mother and father usually watched the CBS Evening News, but as fate would have it, that evening, they were watching the NBC News.
We did not learn until Tom called home later that evening of his interview on the CBS Evening News.
After watching the video, I drove to Winsted and played the VHS tape for Tom (who watched it twice), and my mother (my father had passed away in 1981).
I later made DVD copies of the CBS video before mailing the VHS tape back to the Vanderbilt Television News Archives, with a note of appreciation telling them its significance.
I then saved the DVD video as a file on my computer.
I decided to upload the video to the Google Video website (operating in 2007) to share with other family members.
To upload my video file to Google Video, I needed to convert it to an AVI, MPEG, or QuickTime file.
I chose the MPEG file format.
After agreeing to Google’s terms and conditions, I began the video file upload.
After about 8 minutes (I used a dial-up modem), the video file was inside Google’s database.
I emailed the file link to my other siblings, who watched the Dec. 2, 1971, CBS News broadcast for the first time.
I uploaded the video July 19, 2008, to the non-profit Internet Archive website, where it can be seen at this shortened link: https://bit.ly/35RpVSu.
Save some of your family’s history at https://archive.org.
Stay safe out there.
