B. Gingrich: [Short laugh] Believe it or not I have never attempted to explain it to myself. I've accepted it as just a fait accompli. It's done. Why think about it?

Q: At the time did you?

B. Ginigrich: No. Only to be adamant about the fact that I was not going to the wedding. And I didn't.

Q: Why were you so disapproving?

B. Gingrich: The age difference for one thing. I had never seen the woman. The way to do it is to bring her home, to meet the parents and say we plan to get married.

Q: The way you see what he's become -- do you have any sense of what your influence was in Newt's life?

B. Gingrich: He says it was a great deal. He says. I don't know. I believe we raised him with standards, white, American, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon. Honesty was a virtue and loyalty was a virtue and I tried to instill both of those in all my children. And my daughters say I taught 'em how to say "no." So I guess he learned that too.

Q: The family visit to Verdun. Tell me about that trip and what the place was.

B. Gingrich: Well, there was another officer there from my home town who was stationed in Verdun. In fact, his wife and I graduated from high school together. So they invited us up over the Easter vacation to spend a weekend. That's how we got to Verdun. And of course, once you're in Verdun, you have to go tour the battlefield. It's like being in Gettysburg. It's a very depressing place. You can still see barbed wire, trenches. Newt walked along the road and he picked up an American helmet, a German helmet and a French helmet. All rusted, but they were still laying there. And of course, all the earthworks are still present in the battlefield and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's just a dreary place. Of course, he was very interested in it because history was one of his likings, but as far as it changing his life, I wasn't aware of it at that particular time.

Q: Were you surprised to hear later on, that [it] had such an impact?

B. Gingrich: I was surprised to hear it but I could understand it. I think then, he was 13, and very impressionable at that age. He could look around and see all the ruin and read the battle statistics and casualties and all that kinda stuff and arrive at the decision.

Q: He always had had a keen sense of history. And certainly as a politician he has been able to see politics as a contest in which he is an actor on the political stage. Now that he's Speaker of the House, how would you guess that he sees himself in history?

B. Gingrich: As a contributor. As a player. Where[as] my contribution to history is to stand on the sideline and watch it happen. He actually has a chance to participate. And I think basically that's it.