Mike Pence didn’t talk until he was 3 years old, when his grandfather taught him to say the phrase “You’re welcome” in Irish.
Since that time, the man now America’s vice president used his voice to win speech contests, work on radio programs, excel in law school, and parley a successful career as a U.S. congressman and Indiana’s governor into a term as the nation’s second-most- powerful leader.
“He’s a very kind, thoughtful, very Christian man,” his mother, Nancy Pence Fritsch, 84, said Friday in Chattanooga. “What you see is what you get. That’s exactly who he is. He has no airs, no pretensions. He’s a simple, God-fearing man.”
Amid President Donald Trump’s overhaul of ObamaCare and an FBI investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, Fritsch traveled to Chattanooga on Friday to speak to about 300 Republicans for the Lincoln Day Dinner. The annual celebration and fundraising event for the Republican Party often features a well-known speaker.
Fritsch said beforehand she planned to talk about her son, her family’s Irish heritage, and her first trip to Chattanooga in 1956 – before the interstate highway system was constructed.