Reading notices of Michelle Obama’s Becoming made me remember meeting the First Lady during a campaign fundraiser in Massachusetts the summer of 2012. Here’s an update of some notes I wrote immediately after the event. You can see in the photo that I look a little like a deer in the proverbial headlights. That’s how bright the charisma shining from Michelle Obama felt then, and feels
even more so now.
During Barack Obama’s campaign for his second term as President, I drove from Bedford to Springfield, MA for a fundraiser that featured the First Lady as speaker. One of my husband’s clients was a party donor, and had offered to sell Jeff tickets to the Friday afternoon event. While Jeff realized he couldn’t go, I eagerly volunteered to represent.
I arrived at the Springfield Basketball Hall of Fame about 11:20. Already dozens on dozens of donors were forming up for the Secret Service line. I chatted with a tiny young woman in front of me who worked for a community health service in Springfield. She said her mom told her she shouldn’t have her photo taken with the First Lady since she’d only come up to her navel! A guy who could have been her husband joined her with a young black man I overheard had just finished a documentary on the city of Holyoke called “Cotton City.” Alone, I did a lot of eavesdropping. A young black woman caught up with friends on what she’d been doing since she graduated from Hampshire College in May (she was going to graduate school in education at Columbia). Later, I saw her leave the photo receiving line after having her picture taken and with tears in her eyes gasp, “She liked my dress!”
A sniffer dog walked past but didn’t sniff anyone, though I did see its nose in what looked like an Amazon box but could have been a box of dog biscuits. At the head of the line, an agent emptied women’s bags and picked through the contents. I remembered the scene from the film “Broadcast News” in which Holly Hunter is waiting to get in to a White House event and realizes her diaphragm is in her purse. I didn’t see anything like that.
It hadn’t quite occurred to me that political fundraisers attract…politicians. The mayor of Springfield was there, and the 23-year-old mayor of Holyoke. He had won office last November as the youngest mayor ever of a major city in MA, maybe the country. I imagined that other politicos might be looking him over, thinking he might try for state or national office if things in Holyoke went well. But both these mayors were going to have to step things up if they wanted to compete with Tom Menino in the best-dressed category. I stood with Menino at an event honoring Sam Cornish, Boston’s first poet laureate, and he wore the softest, most beautifully cut suit I’ve ever seen.
In the reception area, waiting for doors to the dining room to open, we were encouraged to sign a birthday card for the President—ten word limit, please. I suppose I could have done a haiku:
Obama cares. We
Care and long for his many
Happy returns—Joyce
but invention failed me. I wrote a standard greeting and spent a quarter of an hour deciding whether to have anything at the bar. Sparkling water? No way to a restroom without going through security again. Wine? Ah, why not. Alcohol dehydrates, right?
At my table were the tiny woman from community health services, the mayor of Holyoke, a Spanish teacher from Agawam, a woman from Williamsburg who, with her husband, ran a geological survey business for railroads, and a bundler. The bundler was from Newton and only did presidential bundling. She was urging me to get involved in door-to-door canvassing in New Hampshire. She said it was fun! [NB—four years later I did just that for Hillary Clinton and while “fun” isn’t the word I’d use, I could nourish the illusion that my work had put NH in her column]. The Spanish teacher murmured that when she saw the Secret Service, she couldn’t help thinking about the scandal in Colombia [over Secret Service agents getting drunk and hiring prostitutes], since she’d studied there.
Lunch was much better than rubber chicken. Chopped salad with bleu cheese, Moroccan spiced chicken breast with couscous and quinoa salad, and a yummy tiramisu for dessert.
During the salad course came introductory remarks by someone who could have been related to Vernon Jordan—her last name was Jordan—or maybe not. Then Grant Hill, whom I’d seen walking around the reception area before doors opened for lunch, not knowing who he was but assuming by his build that he was a basketball player. Then Deval Patrick. There’s no question that this was a much more diverse crowd—diverse in age, too—than you’d find on the other side [This was 2012, remember, and Obama’s opponent was a standard-issue Republican who had, while governor of Massachusetts, enacted a blueprint for Obamacare. “No question” has truly become no question].
After Patrick’s speech, we were signaled, table by table, to get in line to have our picture taken. The line moved briskly. I could see people returning from the tableau with great, goofy smiles. One by one—or group by group—we were beckoned to the other side of the curtain. I hadn’t been this excited since I was 6 and my mother took me to Macy’s to meet Captain Video. I didn’t wash my right hand for days, and wouldn’t let my friends touch it.
Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless (natch!) silk dress. She’s very tall and thin—no rubber chicken for her, just some peanut butter and an apple, I later found out she told the woman from Williamsburg. She reached out to shake hands and gave me a hug. I thanked her for coming to Springfield and doing this work. She thanked me—and said she liked my dress! Then we posed for a photo, and then it was on to the other side of the curtain. I felt goofy and happy. Those toned arms are very warm and smooth. I think you need to be very centered to hug 150 strangers over 45 minutes and not only look like you enjoy it, but actually find something in doing it.
Michelle went on to give a rousing speech, accentuating the positive, focusing on what her husband has done and what’s left to do. Four years earlier I’d heard she’d been a reluctant campaigner but that’s all changed. Several people I spoke to said they might have passed a chance to hear Obama speak, but they weren’t going to miss Michelle. The young filmmaker thought Michelle should take over! And the tiny woman at my table said that Michelle had bent down to make sure they were both fully in the picture.