NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson inspired the Youth Tour when he addressed the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) annual meeting in Chicago, in 1957.
The then senator and future president declared, “If one thing goes out of this meeting, it will be sending youngsters to the national capital where they can actually see what the flag stands for and represents.”
Word of the program has continued to spread, and today over 1,500 students and over 250 chaperones participatein the Youth Tour every year.
We visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, Arlington Cemetery, Mount Vernon, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Marine Corps Museum, took a cruise with other states, Hard Rock Café, National Cathedral, Korean War Memorial, Marine Corp War Memorial (Iwo Jima), Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, Congress Building, and met with Senator Mark Pryor.
My favorite place we visited was The Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was so real to see such a dark moment in the world’s history documented.
News, Pages 11 on 09/19/2012