 Ladies and gentlemen, we are very happy today to have such a wonderful crowd here at Petersburg. Thank their hope. Well, high school band. We have some distinguished visitors that have been with us since Richmond who are leaving us now. Mrs. Julian Slate of Petersburg, Mr. Dooley of Petersburg, Mrs. Edith Collier, Mr. Joseph Owens, Mr. Fred Shepard, Mr. Jack Armstrong, Mrs. Hugh McIntosh, Mrs. Ruth Washington, Mrs. Washington, Mrs. Harry Booze, Mrs. George Field, Jr., Mrs. James Harrison, Mrs. Saul Goodman, Mrs. Mrs. Franklin Warner, Mrs. Fred Sweringer, Jr. I'm Luther Hodges, a Democrat from North Carolina. I want to present your distinguished Mayor, Mayor Andrews. I'd like to present the Mayor of Hopewell, Mr. Honorable Harold Butterworth and his wife. Mrs. Edith Collier would like to thank her for what she's done. I'd like to thank Mrs. Edith Collier for arranging this get-together for Petersburg and Mrs. Harry Booze for the participation of Hopewell. Mr. William Earl White, Mr. Steele, Mr. R. F. Burke Steele, Mr. Archie Wood, local Democrats that all of you know. I would like to have a step here to the podium. Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Mills Godwin, Governor and Mrs. Albertus Harrison and have your distinguished Governor to say a few words to you. Mr. Secretary, my friend, Luther Hodges introduces himself by saying that he is a North Carolinian and a Democrat. I would introduce myself by saying I'm a Fourth District and a South Side Virginia Democrat. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can agree that Heaven and Earth has conspired to give us this day. I'm delighted to be in Petersburg and South Side Virginia and the Fourth District and to join you and welcome to Virginia a very gracious, a very lovely, a very charming person. We are delighted to have Linda Bird. We are delighted to have Mrs. Johnson with us and I know that you will give her the welcome which is so typical of the warmth, the cordiality, the hospitality that is Virginia's and is Petersburg. It's good to be with you. Thank you very much, Governor Harrison. Appreciate very much your being with us, Governor Harrison. Made a wonderful speech up at Richmond to us and we are very happy to have him on here now. I want to present Mr. Herbert Talbot, who is a campaign chairman for the Johnson Bird campaign. Oh! It's good to see you. Happy faces is what we like to look at. We've had a wonderful time in Richmond. The people have treated us like kings and queens on this train. They're all lovely. And I want to say, Petersburg has had many firsts. Along with Virginia, Virginia is first in many things and we're most happy to welcome this beautiful and lovely First Lady to Petersburg, Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Talbot. Thank you, Governor Harrison. They tell me that one of Petersburg's city founders, Peter Jones, when he left on a long trip, advised his sons not to do anything until he got back. He never returned. But his descendants must not have heeded his advice because Petersburg is obviously a can-do city. Look at this crowd they've gotten out. And besides, if you weren't going places, you wouldn't have the biggest truck factory in the world. I can understand why Petersburg is proud sometimes to look backward at its heroic history. I wish the train was going to stop long enough for me to look at some of that history. That's the trouble with whistle-stopping. They're not getting the visit with everlast one of you, which I'd like to do. I'd like to visit the expanded Petersburg National Battlefield and the Crater. I'd like to see the streets where those jaunty volunteers of 1812 turned out in smart, dress uniform to honor President Madison and one for Petersburg, the title of the Cockade City of the Union. I think I see some cockades over there and I think that van. I like to think about the accomplishments of more recent history. I know that Petersburg is one of Virginia's big tobacco and peanut markets and that great improvements in farm income and farm family living have come within our lifetime. I've been told about all the industries that have come here. But now, as a wife, I want to talk to you about my husband who is seeking the office of presidency from you, the people that he works for. To this Democratic candidate and his wife, the South is a respected and valued and beloved part of the country and one that has always been home to me. The experience my husband offers for this awesome job of the presidency is 12 years in the House of Representatives, 12 years in the Senate, three as vice president and ten arduous demanding months as your president. I believe it can be said of those months that he has brought to this country stability and progress and that he has lifted our faces to the expanding horizons of the free world. It's a record that I am proud of. I believe you approve of and I hope you want to continue. I can't tell you how much I thank all of you for coming out. It's getting this day off to a marvelous start. I could just tell by the tone of the voice that Mr. Tarwood had when he walked out here that everything was going to be fine. Thank you. Now, may I just tell you one more nice thing about whistle-stopping. You come across old friends from years of the past and here I'm meeting Estimate Tarva's sister, somebody that I knew for ages and ages. Martha, I'm so glad to see you. I have a lovely one too. It's my privilege to have been asked to present this to you. I guess I was lucky because I was a Texan. I got the opportunity and a loyal Democrat for many years. This is from the hopeful Democrats and we hope you'll use it in the White House for the next eight years. I thank you and I thank all of the hopeful Democrats and I thank you for that sign out there and now I want you to know Linda Bird, our daughter. I want to thank all you young people for coming out particularly, the band and all these young people I see around here because I feel that I represent you and you represent me being a young person. But we have our place in the sun too, not just now and in the future, both times because half the people in the world now are under 25. In 15 years, half the people in the United States will be under 25. So we have our place and our work to do now. So I hope I can enlist your aid, this volunteer generation, my generation. Now, till November and after November, we'll need you just as much. Thank you all for coming. We're so glad to have that wonderful, hopeful high school band and we're going to ask you in a few moments to play a piece for us. Right now, we're going to have a presentation made by Mrs. Roy Creasy of Crepe Myrtlebush to the first lady of the land. Mrs. Creasy. Another laurel to their fair city by making it known as the Crepe Myrtle City. And this tiny shrub is symbolic of the love that we have in our hearts for you, Preston Johnson and your lovely family. And when you see the lovely blooms, the deep red of which you love, it signifies the warmth in our hearts that we have for you. Mrs. Creasy, thank you so much and please thank all the ladies for me. And when this bush gets to the ranch, I'm going to put it out and I have other Crepe Myrtlebushes there that I have loved and enjoyed for years. And this will be a happy reminder of my stop here in Petersburg today. Thank you, Mrs. Creasy. And Ms. Petersburg has a presentation. Ms. Petersburg. Ms. Petersburg, it's my honor to present Lady Bird with these roses on behalf of Mass City. Let's have one selection of that band and we have a little something after that. I want to thank the hope of band. I want to take these two minutes before we finish changing our engine here to take us on down further into Virginia, into North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and on into Louisiana, where we will close up the train trip as a Friday night. I just can't resist the temptation of seeing this many people here saying a few words as a man born in Virginia and now living in North Carolina and a Democrat all the way through top to bottom beginning to end. I hope you don't mind a little personal reference. I was born on a tenant tobacco farm in Pennsylvania County, Virginia, about 15 miles out of Danville, toward Mardinsville, and when tobacco got down to five cents a pound and my father with eight children got two and a half cents of the five cents, we decided he decided I was a year old. He decided that we would go across the board into North Carolina and work in the cotton mills. So six of us boys and girls went to work in the cotton mills as quick as we could get as much as 12 years of age in order to try to make a living. I have watched your state, my native state of Virginia and I've watched my good state of North Carolina as it has come up through these years. I want to testify as a former son of a tenant farmer, a former texture worker and a former governor of North Carolina and now with the great privilege and honor of being in the cabinet of Lyndon Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson, that I think that what the Democratic Party has done for us through the years, what it has done particularly the last three and two-thirty years and what it promises for the future, I can with all sincerity recommend it and I hope very much that you think along those lines.