Normally, I’m a private person. I don’t much like crowds. Others like parties; I like movies. Others may go to a bar to watch a big ballgame; I’m quite content to enjoy it at home, alone. But today was different. While unable to travel to Washington, I yearned to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president from within the warm embrace of a crowd.
The board of a local, historic opera house built in the 1800’s decided that today it would attempt its first-ever live broadcast. They threw open their doors to the public and offered a free viewing of the inauguration. So I took the day off from work and joined 900 others to soak in the experience. It was magical, joyous, and overwhelming.
But it was more than that.
It was inspirational. Here’s a brilliant man who could have done anything with his life. He chose to serve others. He came from modest roots, faced obstacles, and suffered false starts. His service did not start with politics or any particular quest for power. Indeed, it was far from obvious that he would ever succeed in politics at all, much less become the leader of the free world.
Many times during the dozen years of Obama's political rise, he appeared destined only for obscurity. The afternoon in 1998 when he spoke to an audience of seven people at a brightly lit ice cream parlor at 183rd and Crawford Avenue on the southern rim of Chicago, sitting on a wooden stool, relaxed with legs crossed, patiently going through an early version of a stump speech about hope and racial reconciliation that later would become his trademark. In the summer of 2000 when he flew from Chicago to Los Angeles for the Democratic convention and no one knew him, his credit card bounced, and he left after a forlorn day hanging out as an unimportant face lost in the power-lusting crowd. On the January evening in 2003 when he began his U.S. Senate campaign by driving his Jeep Cherokee up from Springfield to Rockford for a banquet honoring black and Hispanic professionals and was barely recognized and not called on to talk, instead having to sit at a back table as a motivational speaker droned on.
Mike Jordan, an insurance agent from suburban Chicago and a longtime associate, was with Obama that night in Rockford and worried that the candidate would be depressed afterward, or so in need of political affirmation that he would work the crowd for every hand he could possibly shake on the way out the door. Instead, Obama went off to a corner to talk to the 15 or so young people who had been awarded minority scholarships, thanking each of them, listening to their stories. No need to panic, Obama told his staff on the way out. No one knew us, okay, but let's see what happens.
Despite any barriers that arose, he found his way over, around, or through them, always with a light burning inside that directed him to serve.