Reflections from a Half a Century Ago

From Leo's Maxim (Memoirs & Poems), originally published on November 16, 2013:

Sometime in 1964, I told Mom (Ellen Greene) that I wanted to be a politician.  As an altar boy at that time, she had hoped that I would be a priest instead, nonetheless, about a week or two later, we went to Hudson's Department Store in Detroit where she bought a pictorial book about the Presidents of the United States of America, and she inscribed the words "To a future president, my son Mark." 

(The written statement by Ellen Greene, theologian, referred to in the paragraph above, is paraphrased.)