to The Village Square

Lea & Liz: Our Day in the Sun, Part 1

July 15th, 2008

Literally, we sat in the sun for quite a while on saturday afternoon waiting to see someone very special…

But it was worth it.

Early one Friday morning we got an invitation from the WHITE HOUSE to be President Bush’s “special friends” at Furman University on Saturday night. Furman is where my husband and I went to college (in case anyone didn’t know that we are proud purple paladins).

It all began because I had emailed a friend of mine a little note about how George W. (I can call him that now because I am his “special friend”) was speaking at Furman’s graduation and how some of the faculty was protesting and would NOT attend the graduation ceremony and how incredibly PROUD we were that he was coming to present the graduation speech. And next thing you know she has emailed that to her friend Jeb (Bush) and then the little email it is going on to the White House and then I received an email from the White House asking us if we wanted to attend graduation as “the President’s special friends”.

And to that I sent an email saying “HELL YEAH!”, just kidding, it said “hell, yeah (in all lower case), just kidding some more. But we did accept the kind offer.

So we packed up friday afternoon right after the kids came home from their last day of school and headed up to Greenville, S.C.

The WHITE HOUSE contact guy had told us to be there no later than 5 p.m. (so they could “manage our comfort level” which I think means in political speak, “so we can have the bomb dog sniff you all over”.)

We arrived at 4:30 (we are early birds when the president is involved) and they found our names on the V.I.P. list (which was a short list with the Governor and all the state Congress people, Mayor, and other political figures in South Carolina…. and our family)…

We were seated in a little section with chairs with names on them… Mayor, Senator, Representative, Chairman, Governor, and Adam, Lea, Millie, Maxx, Rosalea. Everyone was very nice to us and greeted us warmly. Though after we would introduce ourselves the inevitable “Ummm and you are…..?” would be forthcoming from them shortly. I answered, “we are Furman grads, we live in Florida, and I wrote an email to a friend that was sent to the White House and now we are here as special guests.”

I know I should have mentioned The Village Square.

There were 14 faculty members who were allowed to stand in protest durning his speech wearing white t-shirts that said “WE OBJECT” in large black letters. It was very Furman, conservative with a bit of deviation, all in a nice friendly font on a t-shirt.

Click here to see a really great you-tube video of the motocade of cars through Greenville narrated in a lovely South Carolina accent… I especially like it in the you tube video when the kids says, “ITS THE PRESIDENT” when one limo goes by and then shouts out “ANOTHER PRESIDENT” when another limo goes by. Oh, I do miss South Carolina…

Anyway, the whole event was GREAT. We had been sitting in the HOT South Carolina sun for about almost two hours when suddenly everyone saw the motorcade coming down the mall through the middle of the Furman campus. The whole stadium became united as one group. There were gasps, claps, cheers, and shouts coming from all around. My children sat up straighter (and so did i). The President of the United States, the head of OUR country, the foremost of THE finest country in the world, the leader of the FREEST country in the world was coming to us.

For a moment, I don’t think it mattered whether you supported him or not. We were all Americans there and we supported the fact that we HAVE a president. A person that WE choose to lead us, to guide us, to symbolize what we are as a country, who we are and who we want and need to be. We were a small group representing the whole of America. There were protestors, supporters, students, parents, guests and we were all there together ready to hear what President Bush had to say to the graduates and to us.

To be continued…

–Lea

Entry Filed under: This I Believe