Robert Griffin
ROBERT GRIFFIN Interviewed by Dennis Cawthorne July 25, 1996 Sponsored by the Michigan Political History Society P.O. Box 4684 East Lansing, MI 48826-4684 Transcript: MPHS Oral History of Robert P. Griffin, interviewed by Dennis Cawthorne, July 1996 This interview is part of the James J. Blanchard Living Library of Michigan Political History. Dennis Cawthorne (DC): Robert P. Griffin has had an exciting and remarkable political career that has spanned nearly 40 years of Michigan and American political history: United States Representative, United States Senator, author of major legislation, confidant of Presidents, Supreme Court Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. He has been all of these things and more. DC: RG was born in Detroit, grew up in Garden City, and graduated from Dearborn Fordson High School. He served 14 months in the Infantry in World War II in Europe. After the war, he graduated from Central Michigan University, and the University of Michigan Law School. DC: Bob, what was the spark that caused you to get interested and excited about politics? Robert Griffin (RG): Well, like you and a lot of others, I know here and there, in junior high or someplace, I was perhaps a class president or a student council president or something of that kind, but I don't think I really became interested until I went to the Wolverine Boys' State, between the junior and senior year I had at Fordson High School. There, somehow, things seemed to come together. I was a candidate for governor, but I didn't have the support, so a deal was made, and I ran for the lieutenant governor and was elected and spent the day, as these young people do every year, in the legislative chambers in Lansing.
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