A Moment of Light on History
I turned off the last light shining on the White House front portico the night of Barack Obama’s Inauguration. Our new executive had come home to rest in the people’s house for his first time. I was the last man standing – the only cameraman - on the empty North White House lawn; where television correspondents often conduct their live reports.
Standing outside just before 2:00am, I adjusted my background light - the only light shinning on the White House portico. All the while shivering behind the camera’s viewfinder. With NBC White House Correspondent John Yang framed against the house, we hit the air. John smoothly calmed his shivers and delivered his live report, he summarized the historic day and insightfully reminded viewers that two young girls now slept behind us. For Sasha and Malia Obama it was lights out time. At this late hour, we all needed sleep to engage in what was already a new day.
With the shot done and the light now out, I started packing up the camera gear. I froze, as a Secret Service agent emerged from the dark shadows of the White House and politely asked if he could lock the Briefing Room. I was the only one left. He needed to send his tired folks home; it was a long day for the Secret Service. Mere hours before cameras had beamed history across this planet from where I stood. On the other side of White House fence throngs had filled the bleachers. Now only the quiet empty cold was real.
And that night, within the walls of what some had called “The House of Whites,” our Secret Service guarded a new young First Family. Imagine what the First Family’s first dreams were that night. Two million had gathered on our National Mall - without one arrest- to manifest Martin Luther Kings Jr.’s dream before them. The world watched. Perhaps we all invisibly inched a step closer to human justice, and human possibility. My own thoughts were less grandiose; for the first time the man inside the House had props for my work in the cold. My work had more purpose than profit, more reason than status.
In my imagination, I carry around a “soul radar” shaped by the heroic souls I’ve encountered in my work: dissidents in Cuba, Green Berets in Afghanistan, or aid workers in Iraq. While rubbing against famous or infamous people, from Michael Jordan to Saddam Hussein’s spokesman it’s really interesting to note how the famous treats me, the working man. I remember how now President Obama felt up-close and personal. We had just finished interviewing the front-runner Senator Hillary Clinton, and when she stepped out of the camera frame Senator Obama stepped in. Then I stepped into his personal space to clip his microphone on and thought – “I wonder how this new guy is going to feel to me?” We are the same height and as I clipped the microphone, we looked eye-to-eye. He greeted me warmly, and I felt an honest personal recognition, a respect. It’s something almost impossible to fake when a less than a foot away. This perception warmed that cold night.
Putting to Rest the Dogs of the Past
The night before Inauguration Day, I had stepped into the White House Briefing Room after shooting a reporter’s live shot in the bitter cold. A group of folks huddled around surprise visitors. Former President George H. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush were making what was sure to be their last visit to the Briefing Room. After twelve years of calling the people’s house their family’s residence, it was almost over.
Our former President and First Lady chatted with old acquaintances among the press corps while generously posing for photos. In person, the elder Bush exudes the grace and vigor, despite a recent hip surgery. He is a genuine nice guy. And, I brought a smile to his face.
“Mr. President I’ve got a picture here I took to amuse my nieces, Bridget and Katie, that you will love,” I was saying while fumbling through my I-phone. Here I started to explain that the darn sketchy dog Barney never sits still long enough to snap a good picture. The President agreed saying “I know exactly what you mean.” With a fatherly tone implying perhaps he was not the dog’s biggest fan. I said “Remember the day the dog bit the reporter, well an hour and half earlier that day I got this picture of Barney.” The President smiled and said, “You’re lucky the dog didn’t bite your arm off.”
My lips sealed I laughed thinking “is he implying that dogs are like their owners, in this case his son?” Scottish terriers are aloof, territorial and stubborn in short - reactionary.
And How Obama Revived the Dead
Earlier that day I spied a personal hero (a quiet cult leader) emerging from a hotel located a block from the White House, Phil Lesh the bass player of the infamous Grateful Dead. Could this thin slightly hunched hip looking man with a blue tooth in ear, and an expensive sporty parka really be Phil Lesh? I kept the question simple and yelled “Phil”. The thin man turned around and I ran up to thank him - not making clear my thanks was for decades of music rather than his vigorous campaign for Obama.
Since the heroin induced death of Jerry Garcia, the now named “Dead,” have never pursued a high profile tour. But they are this spring, thanks to our new President. Lesh was a block from the White House because Obama invited the Dead to play an Inauguration Ball as a way to say thanks for the Dead’s support. On October 13th 2008, weeks away from the election, the Dead played a concert, full of strategy and stealth for our new leader.
The venue the Dead selected to play for Obama was the Bryce Jordan Center, located on the campus of the Pennsylvania State University. The Jordan Center is centrally located within the state and the only entertainment facility of its size in the region. Central Pennsylvania was the ground zero in the election battleground.
A few months before this concert, Obama lost Pennsylvania to Senator Clinton (her birth state.) Obama picked Senator Joseph Biden, (his birth State) as Vice President, and immediately Biden started stumping in Central Pennsylvania. Unlike Clinton, Biden speaks in an un-elite rambling cadence of rural central Pennsylvania - described by election experts as white, conservative, religious, and under-employed.
The Dead -playing in, what some call God’s country, could backfire. (Imagine a Fox Breaking News Update: “Obama’s real cultural views revealed: hordes of pot smoking hippies gather for Obama.”) Care was in order. The infamous gypsy horde that followed them – Dead Heads - could hurt the cause. The Grateful Dead was banned for life from playing Penn State, so the Dead simply booked the 16, 000-seat arena as a “ benefit for Obama” under their first names - and I imagine, some serious cash. Both the Obama and Dead camps kept the concert a small news event. With some 16,000 folks inside (and lord knows how many in the parking lot), a few votes were surely won for Obama.
When I thanked Lesh standing near The White House, I confessed that I had hoped The Dead would appear on the Lincoln Memorial stage. I told Lesh what an elegant moving show it was. Phil said, “Yeah, man wasn’t Barack’s speech something?” I was working outside the parameters of the Mall concert unable to get in. I never heard the speech, but I got the message.
While I am a mere cameraman, dressed in working man’s clothes, aren’t we all public servants? Now, as President George W. Bush was before him, President Barack Obama is the public servant. For me, I was 39 years old before I really believed in service. My epiphany happened in Urzigan Afghanistan with a Green Beret unit. It was in the midst of a horrific Taliban attack that I witnessed a depth of training, a gravity of souls, when unleashed could touch the thresh hold of human strength, and for me the infinite spirit.
Yet I think these words - spoken ad hoc by the members of the Dead, in announcing this spring’s Obama-inspired tour, articulates the peaceful moment of Barack’s Inauguration. In speaking about what controls their thoughts on an infinitely smaller stage, “If we can have this group mind this grand agreement and operate as an organism together…. that is an amazing orchestra, because then we are not there at all… we disappear…and there is only the music. …… Music (that) touches the infinite, something we can do till the day we die.”
Amen. I felt the nobility of work on Inauguration Day. It is through our work where the soul can touch the infinite.
Comment on this article:
