Newsweek Magazine recently ranked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as the fourth most powerful man in the world. And on Saturday, the chairman returned to his hometown of Dillon.
"My family ties to Dillon extend back more than six decades," Bernanke told the couple hundred people gathered at the Dillon's Wellness Center.
Bernanke lived in Dillon for the first 17 years of his life -- until he went off to college at Harvard and then on to MIT.
He was in town Saturday to attend an official dedication of an interstate interchange that has been named after him.
"I must confess that, until recently, I did not realize that highway interchanges were named after people," the chairman said, not jokingly, but soliciting a laugh.
The S.C. State Legislature recently passed a resolution asking the state's transportation department to name the interchange at exit 190 along I-95 after Dr. Bernanke.
Bernanke thanked those in attendance but focused much of his speech on how Dillon made him the person he grew to be -- one of the world's most influential policymakers.
"I learned how very hard people in small towns like Dillon, and in communities large and small all across the United States, have to work to support themselves and their families," he said.
In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed Bernanke to lead the Federal Reserve, after longtime Chairman Alan Greenspan stepped down.
