Fife Symington recently delivered an address to the Arizona Hisorical Society honoring Barry Goldwater.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I have been looking forward to this day, and I am delighted to be here to remember and honor Barry Goldwater.

He’s a big and consequential figure, and a hard man to capture in words. There has been no one else like him in American politics. But trying to give the man his due is a worthy assignment – and a fun one, too. And you know, that’s one thing to remember about Barry – he was always a lot of fun.

In one way or another, I’ve been drawn and connected to Barry from the early years of my life. Maryland may be a long way from Arizona, but Barry Goldwater carried something of this state everywhere he went. And it was there, when I was 12 or so, that I got my first glimpse of him.

One morning in 1958, there he was, rolling up the steep driveway of our farm thirty miles outside of Baltimore. He had come to stay for the weekend, and his ride was not the black sedan that a young boy expected of a United States Senator. He climbed out of a Corvette Stingray, wearing boots and cowboy hat – and to an eastern boy it looked like Marshall Dillon stepping right out of Gunsmoke.”

For the rest of his speech, click here.