Tuesday, February 12, 2008
A history buff faces a historic dilemma
Shanna Flowers
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As the road to the White House speeds through Virginia today, it's only appropriate that Junius Gaither is strapped in for the historic ride.
A history buff, the 77-year-old Roanoker has encountered his share of presidents -- from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman to Richard Nixon to Lyndon Johnson. Gaither's wife, Lenora, even had tea once with Lady Bird Johnson in the late 1950s in Roanoke.
Gaither was entering Patrick Henry High School on Sunday afternoon when he got word he wouldn't be able to add Hillary Clinton to his list of top-tier political sightings.
But Monday afternoon he was back at PH to see Bill Clinton stump for his wife.
When Gaither spoke with me, the lifelong Democrat hadn't made up his mind whether he would vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in today's primary. But he suggested this is a good time to be a Democrat and a voter.
"It's going to be historical whichever way it goes," the retired nursing assistant said.
Today's election is the first time in years that Virginia's primary will help determine a presidential nomination. Most of our previous votes in recent decades have been political footnotes.
But this year, the Democratic race is wide open, virtually tied, and increasingly looking like it will go all the way to the Democratic Convention. If it does, there's the added intrigue of which way the superdelegates will swing -- for the first female nominee or black man. Or will they be split, too?
The pitch for Virginia votes comes down to today.
"I'm a huge Hillary fan," JoAnna Criscione of Roanoke said Sunday, minutes after she listened to Clinton's teleconference call to supporters inside the PH gymnasium.
"My daughter is 30, and her friends have grown up knowing nothing but a Bush or a Clinton, and they want change."
Criscione said she would support Obama "passionately" if he is nominated and elected.
"However, a female president is the epitome of change. We women have to fight the good ol' boy network no matter what color."
Kim Foster is a senior at Salem High School and Clinton supporter. She walked from an aunt's house near PH to Sunday's rally.
"This is my first year of voting, and I'm voting for Hillary," the 18-year-old said enthusiastically. "I walked here in the cold. Even though she's not here, she still gets my vote."
Outside the gymnasium, Gaither, who is black, discussed the historical significance of his choosing between a woman and a black man in a presidential bid.
"I feel in my lifetime I will see it now," he said of the election of someone other than a white man to the nation's highest office. "But there was a time I didn't think I would live to see it."
The concept must have been unimaginable to Gaither in 1934. He was 4 years old, standing in the yard with his parents as President Roosevelt waved at them. FDR was in town to dedicate the then-new Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Years later in 1952, as a U.S. Army soldier stationed near Washington, D.C., Gaither watched the changing of the presidential guard.
He saw Truman leave the White House that morning. Curious thing, though, Gaither chuckled that he "didn't see Eisenhower go in."
A few years later, attending a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns, Gaither and his wife saw then-Vice President Richard Nixon's limousine pass by, but they didn't see Nixon through the tinted windows.
In 1964, Gaither was at Woodrum Field (now Roanoke Regional Airport) with his young daughter, Michelle, when Johnson landed there on his way to Virginia Military Institute for the dedication of the George C. Marshall Library.
Gaither grabbed Michelle's hand and extended it. As Johnson worked the line, he shook Michelle's hand.
"I don't think she understood the importance of it," Gaither said. "She was excited, but I don't think she understood."
On Sunday afternoon, Michelle, now a guidance counselor at William Ruffner Middle School, was seated next to her father at Patrick Henry High. She also embraced the gravity of deciding whether to vote for a woman or a black man in the presidential race.
"It's sort of like being caught between a rock and a hard place -- a good rock and a hard place," she said, smiling.
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
