IIRC, I did not make that convention. I met Sam when I ran YAF’s 10th Anniversary Conference in Hartford/West Hartford and Sharon in 1970. I was amazed that he and others came all the way from Hawaii. Great guy. Great Conference too. It lasted most of a week.
I joined YAF in 1970 when I was at Occidental College, but that college was—and is—so liberal that there were hardly any conservatives there. The few YAF members on campus were libertarians, so my involvement didn’t last long. But at the University of Southern California, where I did graduate work, the YAF chapter was more robust. These were the years when Craig Shirley, now a renowned author on political history was a mover and shaker in YAF. I met with him many times in the YAF office on Wilshire Blvd., just west of downtown LA.