President Chats with Koshares
Koshare News 1956
The Koshares visit to Washington, D.C. was one of our outstanding experiences of the year. It was made possible by performances we did, sponsored by the Shrine Club of Alexandria.
Mr. Charles E. Bolin and his committee from the Kena Temple and especially Jack Sullivan, the recorder, were very wonderful to us; and in the meantime, Congressman J. Edgar Chenoweth and Senator Gordon Allott spend a tremendous amount of time with us and helped arrange many of our appointments there.
During our visit to Washington, we had the honor of having dinner in Sam Rayburn's (the Speaker of the House of Representatives) private dining room and Mr. Rayburn and Joe Martin (the Minority Leader of the Senate) came to greet our boys and spoke to them briefly.
We also met and had short speeches from all the Senators and Representatives from Colorado. Senator Allott invited us to the Senate Gallery where we watched the proceedings and while we were in the Gallery, we were introduced to the Senators, which was a great honor and quite a suprise, and thus we became a part of Congressional Record.
We also had a special invitation to the White House arranged by Congressman Chenoweth and Senator Allott and were given a very special tour of the White House and we were invited into the President's office. While seeing his private office, we were really thrilled to have President Eisenhower leave a Cabinet meeting and come greet our boys and talk to them for several minutes.
The boys did three television shows in Washington which had wide veiwing audiences all over the east and we took part in a Red Cross Benefit program before the baseball game between the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Socks. We got to meet members of the Washington team and we put on two dances before the game. We did a special war dance to help fire up the Washington team which wasn't doing so well, and were surprised the next day to hear that the Washington papers gave the Koshares credit for firing the team up and they won from Boston and the New York Yankees the next two days.
We got to visit most of the usual places in Washington, including the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, the National Art Museum, Smithsonian Institute, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and the new Marine Memorial. We will never forget the picnic provided for us by Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Steele's daughter and her friends who live in Washington.
We visted Arlington Cemetery and saw the changing of the guards. One of the officers in charge gave the boys the history of the Tomb of the UnKnown Soldier and pointed out some of the fine points of Arlington Cemetery to us. This same officer came to see us during Christmas as he was on board one of the Rose Bowl trains that we entertained during Christmas week.
We really had a wonderful visit to Washington and are looking forward to another visit there sometime in the future.
Koshares meet with President Eisenhower in the Rose Garden, while on their 1958 summer tour.
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