please welcome tracy chernault. [applause] tracy chernault: good evening.

please welcome tracy chernault. [applause] tracy chernault: good evening. i'm a big baseball guy. when he asked me to speak as the leadoff man, that was a first for me. most of you can tell by my size, i have always been rather large i never hit leadoff because i -- that requires somebody speedy. being the leadoff man is something new for me. i was surprised when pat pointed out that the magazine contains his article, because you get to this article, you have to read through my article. which i think should have been the end of the magazine. [laughter] we could have avoided a lot of history that would have droned on. please pick up one of those and read my article. mike gorman has an article as well. it is always a pleasure to speak about petersburg, because most of you in this room having heard stories of petersburg, probably never delved into it. when i was at appomattox courthouse a number of years ago my boss at the time, who , promises to heckle me later, asked me, when i said i was going to petersburg, are you crazy? he said that it was the most unimportant story in all of t