The State College and University Park community attracts more than just thousands of University students and drunken football fans.

Some come because of good trout fishing streams or to visit their beloved brothers. Others come to help fellow politicians on the campaign trail or to pay their respects to loved ones who have passed away.

Or at least that's why presidents of the United States visit this remote college town.

Former President Jimmy Carter's speech before the Pennsylvania Holstein Association's 77th annual convention 8:30 tonight at the Days Inn, 240 S. Pugh St., is not his first visit to State College.

Carter, an avid fisherman, has long enjoyed fighting the trout in the streams of the Centre Region. In early October 1980, Carter was in the area for his most recent documented fishing trip.

The most frequent visitor from the Oval Office was Dwight D. Eisenhower. This was not that uncommon since Eisenhower's younger brother, Milton S. Eisenhower, was University president from 1950 to 1956.

On June 11, 1955, President Eisenhower gave the commencement address before a crowd of 25,000 spectators and 1,828 graduating students. The speech was broadcast nationally by five major radio networks and covered by 70 newspaper reporters and photographer.

During his commencement address, Eisenhower spoke favorably of nuclear energy, then in its earliest stages of development. In typical Cold War jargon, Eisenhower spoke of the "free world" and its necessity to build "atomic-powered ships of war" and "bombs that can obliterate great military objectives."

The freshman class of 1962 had a distinguished classmate for a day. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was named an honorary freshman when he visited here in April that year to speak at the Business Administration Career Day.

The future president's five car caravan was enthusiastically greeted by University students, administrators and members of the Peace Corps as it drove onto campus.

On that spring afternoon 28 years ago, he wishfully predicted that the challenges presented by the ancient enemies of mankind -- inequality, ignorance, ill health and poverty -- will be defeated within the next 25 years.

For his speaking efforts in Schwab Auditorium, Johnson was rewarded with a dink cap and a miniature Nittany Lion Shrine.

Former President Gerald Ford visited here in 1978 to help garner support for his friend William Clinger, a budding politician running for a congressional seat.

But he did more than boost Clinger's political standing. Ford enjoyed a luncheon with several University administrators and a humble football coach named Joe Paterno, while also criticizing then-President Carter.

Paterno, who earlier in the day called Ford "one of the greatest presidents this country's ever had," presented the former executive chief with a football signed by the 1978-79 football team. Paterno also took time to fault Carter, but in the terms of a true football coach.

"President Ford, like a good football coach, made a game plan and stuck to it, not like the Carter administration," he said.

Before being inundated by the Watergate scandal, President Richard M. Nixon traveled to State College in March 1969 to pay his last respects to his uncle and former University professor, Ernest L. Nixon.

Ernest Nixon, the only uncle of the president to have had any higher education, was a professor of plant pathology.

President Nixon's helicopter landed in a field near Beaver Stadium, greeted by hundreds of applauding students. An even larger crowd of 2,000 students and downtown residents cheered Nixon's arrival at the Koch Funeral Home.