George H.W. Bush was no stranger to Lehigh Valley.
The Lehigh Valley saw a lot of George H.W. Bush over the years. He visited some of the area’s most iconic sites such as downtown Allentown, Bethlehem Steel and Lafayette College. With each visit came an outpouring of affection for a man whose service to his country and stint as a steelworker ingratiated him to the Lehigh Valley community.
When was his first visit here?
On a rainy April day in 1980, Bush made his first official visit as a presidential candidate. In Allentown, he joined the Lehigh Valley Homebuilders Association in a demonstration on Hamilton Mall for lower interest and mortgage rates. Then he met with campaign volunteers, ate lunch at the Sheraton Inn, and scooted to Bethlehem Steel, where he reminded workers that 30 years earlier, he was a steelworker in Torrance, Calif.
“I don’t think that shaking hands with steelworkers is a waste of time,” Bernadette Werley, a clerk-typist who met Bush that day told The Morning Call. “I was flattered.”
The whirlwind visit lasted three hours and was sandwiched between other stops in the state.
“It is very important that I do well in Pennsylvania,” Bush told reporters that day.
A month later, the effort paid off in a Pennsylvania win for Bush, who took only five other states in a lopsided loss to Ronald Reagan. Bush’s next visit to Pennsylvania would be as Reagan’s vice president.
Did he come here when he was president?
Elected president in 1988, Bush was hoping for a second term when he landed at Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Airport on another rainy April day, this one in 1992. His visit marked the first time an incumbent president had stopped in Allentown since Harry Truman did so in 1948. Residents showed their appreciation by packing the sidewalks in East Allentown for a glimpse of the president, whose destination was Dieruff High School.
The self-proclaimed “education president” stressed his “America 2000 plan,” which called for raising the high school graduation rate to 90 percent. giving every college student $25,000 in aid, and making the U.S. a leader in math and science fields — goals that remain mostly unfulfilled.
Accompanying him on the visit was first lady Barbara Bush, two of their young grandchildren and the Bushes’ two dogs. The visit put Allentown in the national spotlight and the owner of Anderson’s Diner on Union Boulevard was ready for it, whisking 34 gallons of pancake batter and cooking about 400 eggs for the 500 reporters, law enforcement officers, Secret Service agents, protesters and fans who descended on the neighborhood ahead of the president’s visit.
Ribbing the president a bit, cook Bob Molchany put a broccoli omelet on the menu “for a joke.” (The president’s vocal revulsion of the vegetable had emboldened many American children who shared his sentiments.)
Did he visit after leaving office?
After serving one term and losing to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush settled into life as
an elder statesman, accepting an offer in 1998 to deliver the commencement address at Lafayette College in Easton. This time, he arrived in the Lehigh Valley under a “cloudless blue sky,” The Morning Call noted.
He was hopeful as he addressed the students, even if his predictions would again fall short: “As your class come of age, you will see things are different now. And in my view, the Soviet Union will never go back again; Eastern Europe is going to remain free, and in spite of India’s dreadful and unfortunate action recently, the world will never have to worry about a nuclear Armageddon.”
He challenged students to address an array of social ills: racial prejudice, gangs, teen pregnancies, filthy environment, drugs, illiteracy. And he was prophetic in pointing out the dangers their generation would face from international terrorists, chemical and biological weapons, and narcotics traffickers.
When was the last time he came to the Lehigh Valley?
In 2000, Bush again was stumping in the Lehigh Valley, but this time it was for his son, George W. Less than two weeks before the Bushes would become only the second father and son to be elected U.S. presidents, the older Bush rallied Republicans at Cedar Crest College. Entering the gym to pep songs played by the Whitehall High School Zephyrs Band, Bush was the proud father, promoting his son as the man who would restore respect and dignity to the White House.
“On Nov. 7, I will indeed be the happiest father in the United States," Bush correctly predicted.