While campaigning to beat then-President Richard Nixon in the 1972 election, Democratic candidate and United States Senator George McGovern stopped at the Highland Park Recreation Center.
Patch regional editor Ari Soglin, a Highland Park native, was there when it happened. He was 11-years-old.
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McGovern died early Sunday morning, according to the New York Times. He was 90.
McGovern was elected to the Senate in 1962, and in three terms voted consistently in favor of civil rights and antipoverty bills, reports the Times. He also opposed the Vietnam War.
"I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie," he told the Times in an interview for the newspaper's obituary. "My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like."
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