Not Your Sweetie

Larry in KC - Ad Astra dinner

snip

On the second floor, in a small hallway, they were preparing to send him into a very small press conference room, and he said he just needed to comb his hair, but since he couldn't find a place to do it, he finally just asked if it looked all right. It was all in place, he looked right up at me, and I found myself telling him his hair was fine. He said he always got flak for mussed hair and if his tie wasn't tight and straight. The tie was blue with a small pattern. I asked him, "no red tie?" He said "No, but they tell me they're going to auction this one off."
snip

With piano accompaniment, we sang "We'll Follow the Old Man," if not with skill, then at least with real enthusiasm. What was great was that many in the audience started clapping the rhythm. The General just sat there in his now open-collared shirt, with the twinkle in his eye, just beaming at us. When we finished, he jumped up and came over to us, still beaming, saying, "I don't believe it!" The women got warm hugs and we men got hearty handshakes. We made our way back to our tables, and they then auctioned off his tie (with a real and talented auctioneer, for $3,400!) During that time, the General slipped out. Our Clarkie Mary Ca got out to him to give him a saint's medallion for Gert to match the one she gave him for himself back in Springfield (such a short time but now so long ago!)

And I, for one, feel renewed in my determination to follow the Old Man wherever he wants to go.

and the response to it on DU

Reply

Further DU Kansas comments - re Larry's report
Sat Mar-06-04 09:45 AM
Response to Reply #25
30. About the report.
I think I met Larry but am not sure. Our tables were supposed to be together but because of the unexpected, standing room only crowd we got split up and our table ended up in the back at the corner. From my vantage point I could see the entire room and after every point he made someone, usually more than one stood up. I was impressed in how he got the crowd fired up without becoming like a cheerleader. He simply made his points. My immediate thoughts were that everyone hates Bush, not a surprise, but the most interesting impression I got and I still think this morning it is the correct one was that folks were more "for" Clark and not quite as excited about Kerry. I always thought this state would like Clark and I left with that impression. He did say when we had the poor man cornered that the most important job we would ever have was to fire up Kansans to vote for Kerry. He looked us each in the eye (that was actually kinda scary) and told us we had to do this job. Nothing was more important from now until November. I do not know if it is just him and his being a past commander but I got the impression that he wanted us to know in our deepest cores that this is do or die this time. Damn, I felt like I was going into a fire fight. Several people overheard comments like this from him and from our other leaders. The lasting impression was that things are much much worse than we can even imagine.
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