Thousands come to see the President of the United States
By Forest Lassman
As Barack Obama walks onstage, a crowd of thousands greeted him.
These people had been waiting for this moment for years. Obama planned to come to Lawrence in 2013, but the Boston bombings forced him to cancel.
When the announcement was made that Obama would finally be coming to town earlier this month, excitement spread rapidly. While Kansas is overall very Republican, Lawrence is one of the major Democrat strongholds.
Tickets were given out Tuesday the 20th, and lines stretched for blocks. Tickets started being handed out to the public at 5 p.m. near the Lawrence fairgrounds, and took almost two hours to finish. People came from hundreds of miles away and waited nervously, wondering if they came early enough to get one of the tickets. When the line was cut off near the door, those who didn’t make it stood in disbelief, tired and sad.
Those that did get tickets then had to wake up early on the 22nd to get inside the pavilion Obama spoke in. The line was long, the temperature was low and the wait was long. A majority of the 7,000- plus people waited over four hours that morning, first to get inside and then for the speech to start. The crowd consisted of every type of person imaginable, from college students and kids to a 100-year-old woman.
Inside, people stood shoulder to shoulder on the indoor football field, ready for the president to arrive. To kill the time, conversations were struck up, games were played and phones were surfed.
After an hour or two, Bernadette Gray- Little, the chancellor of KU, came onto the stage to address the anxious crowd. After explaining the history of the college, the speech came to a close. In her final sentence, Gray-Little built and then crushed the spirits of those in the room.
“It’s my pleasure to say the president of the United States of America … will be here in a few minutes,” she said.
Groans filled the pavilion at the words. After hours of waiting, people were ready and had become tired. Some became angry, but after a few more minutes, it was finally time.
After being introduced by a student, Obama ran up to the podium. Hundreds of phones and cameras flew up from the crowd, ready to get a photo, and the roar of the crowd filled the whole pavilion with deafening cheers.
“Hello Kansas. Rock Chalk.” Obama said. “Jayhawk,” the crowd said back.
As Obama went though his 30 minute speech, the audience was captivated.
“I liked his speech. He had a lot of good points. I liked him talking about bipartisanship,” Joana Kozak, who attended the event, said.
As the speech ended and people slowly moved out of the filled room, many were still in awe of what they called a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity.
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