The 2000 election was approaching, so Sterling and I were going to try a first in our autograph experiences... meet the future President of the United States of America. For years we only dreamed of the possibility, but figured it would be way too hard to meet a current president with all of the secret service and all. Our solution was to meet each candidate running for president in this election, which in this case meant Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Walker Bush.
When it comes to autographs, political affiliation is a none issue for us (although we do have strong feelings on the issues). We had recently met Al Gore, so obviously we only needed to meet George W. Bush in order to guarantee that we would have a President's autograph in our collection. Luckily "W" was coming to town for a special ceremony for Veterans and here was the chance we were hoping for.
We arrived at the Memorial and were frisked for anything harmful by the secret service. Inside the event we ran into our friend JC (along with her friend). It was great to see her and it turned out that she was after the same thing, Bush's autograph. We secured some seats and hoped that George W. Bush would be shaking hands with the public after his speech. After a long wait they finally introduced the future President of the United States, George Walker Bush. He spoke of his plans for America's future and said he hoped we would all vote for him come November. It looked as if the speech was coming to an end and we were really hoping that he would come down to greet the public, please George!
"W" knew what the crowd wanted because he immediately took a sharpie out of his pocket when he got off the stage and walked to the crowd! He was signing everything in sight and was just an amazing signer! Bush truly understands that an autograph, though small, can help translate into a vote and that's a good thing for us autograph collectors. It wasn't long until he made his way to us and we were soon staring into the face of the man himself. He signed both of our pictures and then continued to sign and shake hands with the crowd smothering us.
I took this opportunity to hand my camera over to Bush's secret service in order to get a picture him. Bush realized I was waiting for a picture and quickly turned around and posed for a great picture. Sterling was not so fortunate because he couldn't get his camera to the secret service in time and missed out. Fearing he wouldn't get a picture with a possible future President, Sterling tried to cut his way through the crowd to try again.
Sterling was successful in getting to Bush, but unfortunately the secret service didn't take the camera. Instead Sterling trusted a Bush supporter to take the picture and sadly they only got half of Sterling in the photograph. How hard is it to take a picture? That was unfortunate, but at least we got his autograph and headed home satisfied.
