Inauguration forges bonds of fellowship

By: Daniel Gilbert | TriCities.com
Published: January 20, 2009

BY DANIEL GILBERT
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
WASHINGTON – The presidential inauguration is exerting a singular magnetic force, not only drawing history-seekers from afar but forging friends out of strangers, and rekindling old bonds of friendship.
“This is Sue Burgess,” Abingdon resident Kay Saul announced of her new friend – the Maryland friend of one of her co-workers, whom she met for the first time Saturday.
The pair saw President-elect Barack Obama speak at Baltimore’s City Hall on Saturday. On Sunday, they heard the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – he of the incendiary sound bites during the campaign – preach at Howard University. Tomorrow, they will bond in the frigid darkness of a metro stop in Maryland at 3 a.m., lining up nine hours before Obama is set to take the oath of office.
Wright gave “the best sermon I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” Saul said at a reception in the Rayburn Office Building on Monday for constituents of Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., an Abingdon resident who represents the 9th District.
Saul spoke with Wright – Obama’s former pastor in Hyde Park, Ill. – and said the reverend told her he knew of Abingdon and had kin in Big Stone Gap, Va.
Also present at the Rayburn reception Monday was Gerry Taylor, a former British journalist who now works in management at the Times of London.
But Taylor was not in Washington to cover the inauguration; he was there to experience it, thanks to a favor he called in from an American he once introduced to English beer, an American who would become a congressman.
Taylor worked with Boucher in the summer of 1967 in a factory “finishing off combine harvesters,” Taylor said.
The motive behind Boucher’s across-the-pond employment, though, was to buy an English motorbike, Taylor said.
Their correspondence lapsed for years until Taylor contacted Boucher by e-mail. Taylor, who saw Obama speak at a journalists’ luncheon in April, was inspired by the then-Illinois senator.
“Mostly, he was thoughtful,” Taylor said of Obama. “Obviously, we couldn’t vote, but I still think of him as our president as well. He has a major impact on the rest of the world.”
And so, the day after Obama’s victory, Taylor sent a suggestively worded e-mail to Boucher – supposing inauguration tickets would be “pretty hot,” – and wound up with a pair for him and his wife.
“This is one of these things I can tell to my grandchildren,” Taylor said.
Boucher unexpectedly was forced to skip the reception and inauguration to tend to his ailing mother in Abingdon, his wife and staff said.
Vern and Anita Presley, of Buchanan County, Va., have one of Boucher’s staff members to thank for their inauguration lodging.
The couple had searched for a month for a hotel room in metropolitan Washington, they said, but were unable to book anything until a staffer who had reserved a room months ago had to cancel. The Presleys jumped on the newly vacant room, arriving in Alexandria on Saturday. On Monday, they waited an hour and a half to get into the Rayburn building – and others were still waiting when the reception finished up.
Boucher’s staff still had two packages of inauguration tickets to distribute as the catering company cleaned up. They knew where the stragglers were – they were in line.
dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558

Inauguration forges bonds of fellowship

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