MARSHALL, TX. — Nine-year-old Reba McKinzie takes her homework assignments seriously. While visiting relatives in Denton during the Christmas break Reba asked her father to help her find materials to prepare an oral report on President Dwight Eisenhower for presentation to her third grade class. Her father took her to the campus library at North Texas State University, home of the Eisenhower Presidential Papers Collection. There Reba spent three days pouring over the speeches, public papers and correspondence of the former president.
When Reba returned to class at Barloon Elementary School and was called upon to deliver her oral report, she astonished her teacher with a verbatim recitation of President Eisenhower’s 1952 inaugural address. As if this weren’t enough, Reba continued with a recitation of the entirity of Eisenhower’s 633-page 1955 Budget Proposal to Congress. Reba, it seems, had commited to memory all of the more than 200,000 documents in the NTSU Eisenhower Collection!
In recognition of her remarkable accomplishment, a local pro-Republican citizens group working with radio station KRAX-69 has rewarded Reba with her own Saturday morning radio program. Each week the show features Reba reciting a selection from one of President Eisenhower’s more stirring public addresses.
Reprinted Courtesy Of…
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This third grader. Is she any relation to one Mary Ann?
Okay, Reba McKinzie might have been her maiden name.