The Daily Bulletin Archive

Thomas Reigstad, professor emeritus of English, presented an illustrated lecture, “Mark Twain, His Presidents, and Buffalo,” for the Buffalo Presidential Center at the Buffalo and Erie County Central Library on December 10. The presentation focused on Twain's personal encounters with two U.S. presidents—Millard Fillmore and Ulysses S. Grant—and future president Grover Cleveland while Twain lived and worked in Buffalo as a journalist from 1869 to 1871. The talk also included Twain's late career political platforms that shaped his dim view of William McKinley and his love-hate relationship with Theodore Roosevelt.

Dr. Reigstad was also the source of a December 8 Buffalo News column by Erik Brady, “Bills-Jets Rivalry Missing the Hatred, But It Does Have a Poem,” which cited his frequent teaching of May Swenson’s 1970s poem “Watching the Jets Lose to Buffalo” to his American literature students at Buffalo State.