Up close and personal

Although the images of presidents appear everywhere, few people actually get to see one in person. It’s an experience most people never forget, judging by the comments Times readers have been sending to an online feature about close encounters with presidents.

One woman recounted how her labrador retriever got away from her and jumped on Gerald Ford. A former dancer and singer at the Missouri State Fair remembered getting a compliment from Harry S. Truman after she sang “Stormy Weather.” One man described seeing Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush at a luncheon in honor of George C. Marshall. “It was stunning,” he wrote.

To tell your story or to read about more encounters, visit latimes.com/inauguration. Excerpts of some reader submissions:

In the early 1980s, I founded Camp Good Times, to help children with cancer like my son, David. After our program was profiled in Reader’s Digest, a woman called. . . . She said President Reagan was on the line.

Certain my brother, Michael, was tricking me, I played along. The “President” said he read about us and wondered how my son was doing. After realizing it was, indeed, the leader of the free world, I invited the President to see the camp. He and Mrs. Reagan visited us for four years and, on each occasion, were friendly and warm.

Once the President moved into his Century City office, our family went to see him. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s but was still working. I asked the President if he remembered me; he said he thought so. Then David, who, suffered brain damage from cranial radiation, embraced the President. The two of them held each other in one of the greatest hugs I’ve ever seen. . . .

-- Pepper Edmiston

Pacific Palisades

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The crowd was thick lining the Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City. . . . Standing in an open limousine and holding on to a safety bar, his auburn hair catching red glints of midday sun, President John F. Kennedy passed quickly by and was gone.

The Mexican family I had lived with for eleven months offered to take me the next day to hear him speak. . . . We stood on the soccer field amid a large crowd. . . . President Kennedy stood and spoke briefly, saying that on that American holiday, July 4, 1962, Americans in a foreign land should not have to listen to long speeches, and he said he would like to join us on the field. . . .

As he came close, I thrust my hand to him, and President Kennedy shook it and smiled. Then there were moments of blur, at the core of which were his eyes. The crowd had rushed at us, and the President was encased in the bodies of his security, and he was gone. When I think of that moment over forty-five years ago, my palm feels his palm, and my inner eye sees his eyes, holding, in an instant, fear.

-- Darrell Eckersley

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In November 1931, a couple of weeks after Franklin Roosevelt won the election, Herbert Hoover, the loser, came to Sierra Madre to visit his brother Allan. Local officials recruited a bunch of us school kids (I was 9 years old) to . . . wave flags as the President drove in. He and his entourage . . . arrived in a large touring car with its top down. It seemed to me my flag almost touched the Presidents’ head as he passed underneath. . . . [H]is face was very pale, probably from the exhaustion of the recent campaign.

-- Alan Stevenson Wood

Sierra Madre

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. . . . [A]s we were driving by Rancho Park Golf Course, my dad . . . said it looked like a VIP was playing golf. He parked the car so we could see who it was. . . . [A]s the entourage approached the 13th green, we realized it was President Clinton! . . . . After he finished putting, the president walked out of his way about 40 yards over to the fence to visit with us. . . . We chatted with him for about three minutes. . . . I was the only four year-old at my pre-school who had a private visit with the president.

-- Ethan Kimmel