It
was Stephanie, my 18-year-old granddaughter, on the phone calling me from
Northwestern. It was the day
before the 2008 presidential election.
”I’m
going to Grant park tomorrow night,” she declared. You could sense the excitement
in her voice.
I paused a moment and in a grandfatherly
manner cautioned “There will be a huge crowd, hundreds of thousands. It might
be a little risky.” (remembering the riots in that same park in '68)
"Papa!", she exclaimed. "This is a great moment in history! We will be there when Obama accepts the victory. I wouldn’t
miss it for the world."
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| Photo ©2007 Susan W. Saltzman |
“Of course not, go.” I said, giving it a second thought, remembering the time when my own Grandma Kolinsky tried to keep me from a Willkie rally downtown because it was Yom Kippur.
History,
I thought as my mind wandered back through the years. History...
In
my lifetime, as a newspaper reporter and political junkie, I had seen political
history in the making since Harry Truman came to the public square in '48 to
tell a skeptical crowd of 40,000 that he would lick Tom Dewey, the odds-on
favorite. And he did, big time.
Even earlier as a teenager in
1940, I had seen Willkie riding through the streets of Cleveland to assail FDR,
in public hall.
And in 1952 I watched with sorrow
and embarrassment, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the man who led the forces of the
free world, in Europe, making a complete fool of himself swinging a full sized
broom in front of the Carter hotel, promising a “clean sweep” of the polluted
government.
That night at
public Hall, Ike and the rest of us, watched Nixon’s Checkers speech on a
giant screen, and then declaring that Tricky Dick was “as clean as a hound’s
tooth.”
Later, after he was elected, I sat though one
of his sputtering, stumbling press conferences, in the White House, before live
television, before his fragile grasp of the English
language was revealed. An honest decent man,
nonetheless.
Then
there was the fragile sounding intellectual Adlai Stevenson, coming to the
Cleveland area. He could not fill the 8000 seats. A sure sign that he was in deep trouble. So much for an intellectual in presidential
politics.
And
Kennedy. Saw him and Jackie first as an ambitious senator at the Maple Syrup Festival in Chardon. My wife Grace got his autograph.
Later at the
compound in Hyannis port, it was Ohio Day for the press and I was invited. Press
secretary Pierre Salinger wouldn’t let Grace in, so she, very
disappointed, sat all morning in the in car parked outside. He took us all to lunch
to make up for it later. There was Bobby
playing pitch and catch with Mike DeSalle, our paunchy little governor. It is
said that JFK later wanted him for Secretary of Health and Welfare. He asked for
that “little Italian from Ohio,” and got Tony Celebreeze instead. Teddy arriving in a very large
convertible with Jackie. Jack speaking to some judges through the fence surrounding
the compound.
And
JFK again at Euclid Beach as he launched his campaign on Labor Day 1960, trying
to convince a hoard or union working stiffs that he, this kid, this rich Catholic
from Cape Cod, could indeed pass the torch to “a new generation of Americans”. The crowd roared and many of them loved it.
And
now Obama in Grant Park on television…hundreds of thousands all colors, young
people, families cheering, crying, waving a million flags of red, white and
blue…shouting Obama! Obama!
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| Photo ©2007 Susan W. Saltzman |
Now that was history. Stephanie called the next day to tell me she was okay…although she didn’t stay for the speech.
She
had experienced history for the first time.
Stephanie, welcome to the club.
Where the heck IS that Kennedy autograph, Dad!?
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