Published: April 25, 2008 02:43 pm            

STAWAR: Oh Boy, Obama

I was in my doctor’s exam room waiting for blood test results, when I got a call from the office saying that the Secret Service wanted to talk to me right away. At first I was afraid that someone had written a threatening letter to the president, but I quickly learned that they were making arrangements for a visit by presidential hopeful Barack Obama to downtown Jeffersonville. LifeSpring, the community mental health center where I work, has offices on both ends of the block of Spring Street that was cordoned off for this visit. It turns out I didn’t have to do anything, since my efficient staff made all the arrangements with the Senator’s security detail. In fact, before I got to work I got another call saying that I wasn’t needed.

We were directed to close our bookstore on Spring Street, but were allowed to keep our other offices open since their entrances were on the backside of the buildings facing away from Spring Street. This was fortunate since we had a full schedule of patients coming in that day to see their physicians and therapists or pick up medications. I am not sure what would have happened to our patients if our front doors had faced the other way.

Our employees described the Secret Service representatives as unfailingly polite, but also preferring to ask for permission generally after they had already done whatever they intended to do.

They told us that the Obama people were going to make a campaign commercial on Spring Street and that’s why they needed it cleared. They also wanted us to cancel a retirement reception scheduled for our large meeting room on Spring. They finally relented when we told them how difficult it would be to recall invitations and after we agreed to keep the front door closed and the blinds drawn. We were told in no uncertain terms that there was to be no peaking through the blinds and there would be no hesitation in arresting violators. I wondered what the actual charges might be, but not being eager to visit Guantanamo Bay, I kept my curiosity to myself. I heard that other business owners were also told to close their shops and stay away from their windows during the filming.

Many of our patients left their treatment programs early that day, joining the crowds of people hoping to see Sen. Obama. They weren’t disappointed. Some of our employees even got to be in the commercial itself. After the filming was completed the Senator appeared by the entrance to our Family and Children’s program and delivered a short inspiring speech to the assembled crowd and shook some hands before departing.

While attending the retirement reception for Joan Kemper, LifeSpring’s brilliant vice president for development for the past 8 years, we could hear the crowd cheering and few daredevils at the gathering even tried peaking out the window.

Overall, I was proud that downtown Jeffersonville had the distinction of this historic visit, but it also seemed that there was precious little courtesy extended to the downtown business owners and their customers, who sacrificed for this event. There was occasionally some hint of threat in the tense atmosphere and in many cases private property was treated rather cavalierly. I don’t believe that you can necessarily blame the candidate for the tone of how things took place, but I would have liked to have imagined that in this great exercise of our nations’ democratic principles, the rights of private citizens would have counted for a little more.

Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D. lives in Georgetown and is the CEO of LifeSpring in Jeffersonville. Contact him at tstawar@lifespr.com or 812-206-1234.

        

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