Community embraces ‘wild’ sights and sounds of Obama visit

Signs welcome President Obama on a fence outside Hilltop Child Development Center on the KU campus before the Presidents speech Thursday, Jan. 22, 2015.

Lawrence Mayor Mike Amyx isn’t sure he’s quite mastered the celebrity smile just yet. But when you hang around with President Barack Obama, you had better figure it out.

Amyx was part of a group of people who got to shake Obama’s hand and exchange a few brief words with the president before his speech Thursday at Anschutz Sports Pavilion. Amyx also got his photo taken with the president, and that’s when Amyx noticed something odd start to happen.

“I had a bunch of people I didn’t know who wanted to take a photo with me because I took a photo with him,” Amyx said. “It was wild.”

It was that kind of day in Lawrence.

The 103-year drought since the last time a sitting president visited Lawrence was broken. A four-year-old with a bullhorn participated in one of a handful of protests around town. And a local pizza delivery driver will always wonder whether she had just delivered — indirectly, anyway — pizza to the president.

“We joked about ‘what if these are for the president?’ ” Jon Studtman general manager at Minsky’s Pizza, said about the 9 to 10 large pizzas that were ordered by a guest at the Holiday Inn.

When the delivery driver arrived about noon on Thursday, she reported that the pizzas had indeed been for a crew of Secret Service officials.

“I would like to think that Mr. Obama got to try a slice,” Studtman said.

The timing suggests that may be unlikely. But who knows, perhaps the leader of the free world issued an executive order to save him a slice.

Scores and scores of Lawrence residents were left to let their imaginations run wild about the president and what he may or may not do in Lawrence. Amyx, a downtown barber shop owner and longtime mayor and city commissioner, said he had a hard time imagining what it was going to be like to shake the president’s hand and make a few brief comments. Amyx said he thanked the president for his service and managed to make a brief statement about Lawrence’s efforts to build a technical training center, thinking it tied in well with Obama’s remarks in the State of the Union address about community colleges.

But Amyx said he was surprised by what happened a few moments later. The president during his address thanked Amyx by name for the community’s hospitality. Amyx was one of just three people Obama mentioned in the opening, with the other two being Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole.

“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” Amyx said about hearing his name on stage. “I’m very proud of our community. It was great to see all the excitement. Stories from this day will fill a lot of time in this barber shop for a long time.”

The town generally was in a good mood to see the president. Protests surrounding the event were relatively sparse. A group of about eight members of the Missouri chapter of Overpasses for America came to demonstrate on the Irving Hill overpass that spans Iowa Street and connects KU’s main campus with West Campus.

The group promotes the idea that “government is the problem and is in need of massive reform.” When asked about specific issues they were protesting on Thursday, one member said to wait a second and he would get out his list. Then he took out his wallet and removed a list that he carries with him: Benghazi, the IRS, Fast and Furious, and “that Obamacare is just a terrible mess.”

Just up the street, there was a larger demonstration of about 20 people. It mainly was comprised of Obama supporters who were there to urge the president to remain strong in his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline project.

The group would chant “keep the tar sands in the soil,” and then 4-year old Everett White — with the aid of a bullhorn — would chant: “we don’t want that dirty oil.” Another sign read “don’t be chicken, use your veto.” It came complete with a rubber chicken tied to it.

Signs weren’t the only thing to be seen, though. T-shirts commemorating the day also were available. ACME, a Lawrence-based shop downtown, was capitalizing off the event by selling shirts with a drawing of Obama’s face and the phrase “Barack Chalk.” Cody Drake, an assistant manager at the shop, said the T-shirt design actually had been available for about three years at the store, but sales recently took off with the news that the president was coming to Lawrence.

There also were more serious sentiments expressed Thursday. Obama made a visit to the Community Children’s Center, a Head Start preschool at Plymouth Congregational Church. The church was founded in 1854 before Kansas was even a state. Its founders were abolitionists who were deeply committed to ending slavery. Peter Luckey, senior pastor at the church, said it wasn’t lost on him that it was fitting America’s first black president was in Lawrence, a town founded on the idea of ending slavery.

“To feel like our history is some small part of the story that made it possible that a black man could be president of the United States,” Luckey said. “Well, it is a special day.”

Indeed, it was that kind of day in Lawrence.

More reports from President Obama’s visit to Lawrence