I was very impressed by an email from the Wylde family on the Wisconsin for Obama listserv. Since the Wyldes aren’t bloggers, they happily agreed for me to post it here….
My husband is a long time democrat and I of course was a forever republican. Political debates in our family have always been avoided. He votes his way and I vote the “family way”. Never really paying attention to candidates in the past just knowing as a “Family rule” you Vote Republican. But there was something about Barack Obama that really moved me. Made me sit down and listen to him for the last several weeks and truly pay attention and then it hit me like a wall of bricks. Everything that Obama is hoping to change in the US is important to me. As an example: Healthcare: We are self employed, our daughter had an accident last summer and was in the emergency room, what we thought would be good insurance was very substandard and left us with a bill of over $5000.00. We looked at our policy and we really don’t get much coverage for $1600.00 every three months. Then we have three kids one a senior in high school and two sophomores. Although the kids get good grades and have some scholarships it still doesn’t pay for their college education. Our senior wants to be a psychologist, our daughter sophomore wants to be an attorney and our son the other sophomore wants to be involved in criminal justice. Well just hearing that you can imagine the dollars involved for college. The plan that Barack has for $4000.00 credit for the kids to attend college every year … but they don’t get it for free, they have to volunteer thru the community. Our kids have always been involved in the community so this will be nothing new. But they have always expressed that there is very few people that show up to actually help. Once again Barack moved us! So with all this being said we heard that Barack Obama was coming to the Kohl center and I made the decision for the family to go and see him. This thrilled and also stunned my husband. In the mean time I signed up on Barack’s web site and even made a small donation. I’m excited enough to step outside the boundaries of the “family rule” and actually join in the fight for something I believe in! At the age of 40 this is a HUGE Step.
We picked our kids up from school. Both sophomores and drove from Wisconsin Dells down to the Kohl Center. Our other son, the senior, had to work and couldn’t take off last night. We arrived there about 4:20 pm and were led right inside to a holding place. There must have been about 2500 people in there. What was amazing to us is the crowd was extremely diverse. There were all ages, and a full ethnic spectrum. For an outsider looking in … How can Barack move this diverse of a crowd? WOW! We stood and stood and stood some more. Wondering as to why they weren’t letting anyone in. Finally someone came over the sound system and announced they will begin letting people in shortly and folks thanks for your patience it’s worth the wait I promise you that. We didn’t know what the guy was talking about. But there we stood even more, people seemed to be in a pretty cheerful mood and there were only a few complainers in the crowd but it doesn’t matter where you go you always have that select few that are never happy.
It was finally time and they began to lead us in, it seemed like it took forever to go thru the winding ropes and people continuously were jockeying for position within the rope lines. After going thru security, we had to go thru long halls, down stairs and thru the locker areas as one of the security said to our family “oh folks your gonna love this.” We just smiled and continued the long walk.
Well we made it out of the tunnel and onto the floor, YES THE FLOOR! We were told where to stand… right behind the podium. We never imagined being so close. Secret service handed us signs to hold up during the speech. Our daughter was even on CNN last night with a close up. The speech was inspiring and even had our son cheering and commenting which he’s usually a bump on log most of the time. Barack even moved him! It was very exciting. It seemed like he only spoke for 10 minutes, hanging on each of his words, much to our amazement he spoke for 30 minutes. Barack left the stage and then walked around the stage circle and shook hands with everyone he could reach. We all shook his hand, it was inspiring, uplifting and completely energizing. He spoke to my husband and said thank you for your support, my husband responded back “no sir, thank you”. Barack shook his hand again! As soon as I can figure out how to download our cell phone with all the photos I will post those as well.
After the rally we signed up to be on the list for volunteering. We are excited to be part of this incredible journey. Ladies and Gentlemen.. YES WE CAN!!!
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