Memorable handshakes while on the job

Remember the old days when you could shake someone’s hand when you met them on the job, not just bump elbows?

One of the firmest handshakes I can recall was from Pero Tododovic, a pig farmer in the tiny village of Donji Zagoni, Bosnia. I was there on a snowy day just before Christmas in 2003 to write about the peacekeeping mission of Minnesota National Guard troops, many from Duluth and the Iron Range, and we were invited into Tododovic’s house. His wife poured glasses of homemade plum brandy, slivovitz, and I was informed by our interpreter it would be an insult if we didn’t oblige.

President George H.W. Bush (No. 41) had a surprisingly strong handshake. He was also taller than I expected when he stepped off Air Force One — at the time, in 1992, the brand-new gleaming white and powder-blue 747 version on its first-ever trip to Minnesota — and walked over to talk to a line of reporters and well-wishers gathered on the tarmac at the Twin Cities airport. I can’t recall what question I asked him as the cameras snapped, but I still recall his grip.

By John Myers jmyers@duluthnews.com

For many of my 34 years reporting at the News Tribune, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interviewing — and shaking hands with — many interesting people. Some were famous and influential: politicians, activists, heroes, entertainers. Others were just fun.

A fellow reporter once suggested I keep a list, so for a while, I did. But somewhere along the line, among the many computer system changes we’ve had at the News Tribune, I lost my list.

So now it’s all up to my feeble memory, a few front pages I’ve saved for posterity, and the paper’s electronic library of stories since 1995.

I met former Senate Majority Leader and eventual Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole at the Duluth airport; I think this was 1996. He kept a pen in his right hand and shook with his left. His right arm had been badly injured during his service in World War II. I remembered that in time to reach out my left hand for his left hand.

We spoke for a while on the issues of the day and, I’m not sure why, I felt obliged to thank Dole for his service and sacrifice, and I told him my dad had served in the war, too.

I shook hands with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry after an outdoor rally in Cloquet in 2004, then a few weeks later got his running mate, John Edwards, at the Hibbing Memorial Building.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton answered questions and shook my hand in a hallway outside the gym at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where she was stumping for soon-to-be U.S. Sen. Al Franken in 2008. (Franken could tell a joke and shake hands at the same time.)

Years earlier at UMD, I interviewed (and shook hands with) the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination and promoting his Rainbow Coalition.

In 1988, I rode in the back of a conversion van from the Duluth airport to the Depot with Mike Dukakis, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and his wife, Kitty. The discussion turned to the rigors of the campaign, and their family, and she started to cry.

The late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, a former NCAA wrestler, was short, but shook hands very hard every time, often grabbing your wrist with his free hand, as if he was about to take you down. (He also had a habit of hugging people.)

I interviewed famed labor activist Cesar Chavez outside a Duluth grocery store.

I met Willie Nelson on board his tour bus outside the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center as Nelson promoted nontraditional biofuels. (No, not hemp.) The bus engine burned used restaurant grease instead of diesel. The bus was huge and Nelson seemed small and frail, but shook hands firmly.

I interviewed Donald Duck Dunn, the bass player for Booker T and MGs (and for the Blues

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Brothers) and set him up with a local fishing guide for an outing after their Bayfront Blues Festival gig. He lived in Florida, where he fished every day and he loved to fish on the road, too.

I had lunch with then Vice President Al Gore in his office in the Old Executive Office Building across from the White House. About a dozen environmental reporters from the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers met with Gore in 1995 as part of a conference in D.C. I remember Gore seemed perturbed when I asked him a question about roadless area regulations in national forests. We shook hands after the meeting, but he may still hold a grudge to this day.

By far my most photographed handshake was with then-President Bill Clinton on the tarmac outside the 148th Air National Guard base at Duluth International Airport. I don’t even know who took the photos, the prints just started showing up in the mail a few days later. (This was before digital cameras and email were common.)

I had been assigned to the national press pool for the visit in 1994 and, even as other News Tribune reporters got up close to the president as he moved around Duluth to greet cheering crowds, I never got closer than four cars behind him. I was able to ask him a question at a formal press conference, but never up close. Until he was just about to leave town.

As Clinton and U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar walked from the presidential limousine toward Air Force One, Oberstar noticed me behind the rope and motioned for me to come over to them. A Secret Service agent nodded OK and escorted me. Oberstar introduced us and I recall shaking hands with the president and asking him a few questions. We talked for more than a minute — it seemed much longer — but I was carrying my old laptop computer (probably a Radio Shack model) in a briefcase and it was almost impossible to hold that and my notebook in my left hand while writing with my right. When I got back to the newsroom, my notebook had only a few single words on varied subjects. It must have been an interesting conversation, but I can’t remember any of it.

I’ve had several near-misses over the years. After covering his campaign speech at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in 2004, when he extolled the “Iron Ridge,” I was walking back to the newsroom to file my story when President George W. Bush (No. 43) drove right by me in The Beast (the presidential limo) on Fifth Avenue West on his way back to the airport. He waved and smiled — maybe it was aimed at me? — but the motorcade didn’t slow down enough for me to stick my hand out.

I was within a few feet of Vice President Joe Biden at the Duluth police headquarters in 2014. After a speech praising Duluth’s domestic violence policies, Biden was pressing the flesh with the small crowd. I went closer to ask him a question (and shake his hand), but was shoved away by one of his handlers at the last second.

“Back in the press pit!” she demanded.

Twice I was very close to Donald Trump — just inches away in 2016 in a Superior airport hangar when he was a candidate shaking hands with supporters, and a few feet away in 2018 in a warehouse in Duluth when the president was talking about economic issues. I didn’t shake his hand either time. (I did end up standing under the wing of Air Force One in 2018 in almost the exact spot where I had been with Clinton 24 years earlier.)

My most memorable handshake on the job came in 1990 outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was in Minnesota at the invitation of then-Gov. Rudy Perpich.

Perpich, the Hibbing native and former dentist who remains Minnesota’s longest-serving governor, was trying to elevate Minnesota’s stature on the world stage (and elevate his re-election chances, too, although that part didn’t work.) Gorbachev spent the day touring the Twin Cities, meeting with business and political leaders, including some from Duluth, while his wife, Raisa, met with Minnesota families.

It was a surreal event, on a cold, rainy June day. Throngs of cheering people lined Summit Avenue for a glimpse at the leader of the Evil Empire who appeared to be leading the Soviet Union toward a more normal relationship with the U.S. after nearly a half-century of cold war. (Indeed, just one year later, Gorbachev oversaw the peaceful collapse and demise of the Soviet Union.)

Unexpectedly, instead of leaving the governor’s mansion and zooming in his Soviet-made ZIL limousine to the next stop, Gorbachev walked over to the wall of humanity gathered along the avenue and started shaking hands. Pandemonium erupted, as if Gorbachev were Elvis. People screamed “We love you, Gorby!” Reporters and photographers rushed to get closer. I bolted off the flatbed semitrailer that had been set up for the press and positioned myself along the line where I thought Gorbachev was heading.

It worked. Gorbachev eventually walked right up to where I was. But as we raised our arms to shake hands, I felt another hand, this one on my chest. It was a KGB agent pushing me back firmly enough to frighten me. (Did I look suspicious? Maybe it was my trench coat?) My hand grazed Gorbachev’s as we looked each other in the eye, and then he was quickly moving down the line to the next person. That, I thought, was about as cool as it gets on the handshake spectrum, even if we just grazed each other.

There were other interesting handshakes, I’m sure, except I lost my list. I could tell you about the time we ran into Ron and Nancy Reagan at the Ralph Lauren Polo Outlet Store in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But that was on vacation and had nothing to do with my job. u