I met four governors, six cabinet members, three senators and covered two presidents in my journalism career. The most distinguished people I ever covered were regular folks, and that was perhaps the greatest lesson I learned.

After his time running agriculture, Henry A. Wallace, left, would go on to be Franklin Roosevelt's vice president and, later, Harry Truman's commerce secretary. He was a man of achievement and a man of controversy. Henry Wallace was outspoken, you see, and he had a way of needling even his allies. But he believed what he believed. And even if they didn't like him as vice president, even his critics believed in his cabinet bona fides.

Wallace, as a boy, knew George Washington Carver, and the lessons he learned from him stuck with him and he would become a talented and influential farm researcher and businessman in his own right.

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