WATERTOWN, S.D. — The big, gray Air Force plane carrying the president’s limousines flew low, slow and loud over this small farming city, shaking buildings and barns.
The noise from its engines rattled the doors at the Cattleman’s Casino, where the owner was hanging an American flag, and the windows at the Midwest Bible Camp, where the pastor and his wife hadn’t voted for the president but still put up a sign asking God to bless him.
It surprised the mayor, who was doing an interview with a radio station 100 miles away in Sioux Falls. “Check that out,” he said last Thursday when he spotted the plane through his office window.
Hundreds of Watertown residents rushed to the airport so they could see the plane up close and on the ground. In 36 hours, the president would be coming to this city, the fifth-largest in South Dakota, to deliver the commencement address at the community college.
There’s hardly a state in America more hostile to Barack Obama than South Dakota. His disapproval rating hovers around 70 percent, and the local Republican Party last summer passed a resolution calling for his impeachment.
But even in an era of almost unprecedented political polarization, people still want to see their president.
That was especially true in Watertown, which had never hosted a sitting commander in chief. At the airport terminal, about 300 people were standing along the fence line.
“This is definitely not his president,” said Laurie Brandriet Keller, gesturing to her husband. “I’m amazed how excited he’s been these last few days.”
A ramp dropped, and out of the plane came bomb-sniffing dogs, trucks and vans. There were Secret Service agents with guns. Last off were the two presidential limousines, each bearing flags with the presidential seal.
“Just look at the size of that thing,” said Harley Waterman, who had shut down his pawn shop to race out to the airfield. “A once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
Causing a stir
For the vast majority of Watertown’s 21,000 residents, the only chance to see the president would come as his motorcade sped past them on the way to his Lake Area Technical Institute commencement address.
The motorcade route was less than 4 miles and not likely to last much longer than 10 minutes. It was also supposed to be secret.
Jerry Elshere, 70, a retired middle school assistant principal, stood along 10th Avenue, about a mile from the community college. In the 1920s, his parents had driven 400 miles to see Calvin Coolidge, who had gone trout fishing one summer in the Black Hills. Now Elshere and his three grandchildren hoped to catch a glimpse of Obama.
The motorcade wouldn’t pass for at least another hour, but already a small crowd was forming. They carried signs and set up lawn chairs.
“Am I wasting my time standing here?” a woman asked.
“I know, but I can’t say,” said the lone police officer.
Most in the crowd, which was now three or four people deep, were die-hard Republicans and had little love for this president.
“I wonder if he’s a Christian sometimes,” said Kristi Maas, 47, who owns a small hair salon in town. “He wants to take prayer out of everything. … Isn’t this country supposed to be based on religion?” Heads nodded around her.
The president’s plane landed about 30 minutes late. Someone tuned a radio to a local station where the DJ, who usually announces the Watertown High School basketball games, was doing a play-by-play of Obama’s arrival. The president was coming down the Air Force One steps. He was shaking hands with the mayor and climbing into a limousine.
A few minutes later, the police officer’s walkie-talkie buzzed. “Everyone needs to back up,” the officer said.
The crowd took three steps from the road and then surged forward again at the sight of the two black limousines.
From where Maas was standing, the light was perfect. She could see Obama smiling and waving through the tinted window for three or maybe four full seconds … and then he was gone.
“Oh, my gosh, he waved at me!” Maas said. “That was so cool!”
Commencement
Obama’s commencement address aired live on all of Watertown’s major television and radio stations.
At the Cattlemen’s Casino, a two-room bar on the north side of town, about 30 people clustered around the big flatscreen at the front of the bar. For the first, and probably only time in their lives, they were listening to a president talk about their town, their friends and their relatives.
Stephanie Burchatz
, 51, had spent most of the day laying new sidewalks, curbs and gutters for the city. Now she was listening as the president talked about the girlfriend of one of her employees, a single mom who had gone back to Lake Area Tech to get an associate’s degree.
“By age 20, she was working as a waitress, supporting two beautiful baby girls, Lizzie and Farah, on her own,” Obama was saying.
“This is good,” Burchatz said. “This is really, really good.”
Obama was reading the speech — his seventh public address of the week — off a teleprompter. But to the people in the bar, it seemed as if he were telling their stories from memory. When he was done, the bar erupted in applause. A woman sitting in the smoking room by the video poker machines had begun crying.
Burchatz’s brother glanced at the television where Obama, his speech finished, was accepting a Lake Area Tech jacket from one of the graduates. His mouth fell open. “That’s the kid who ran over my mailbox last week,” he yelled.
Leaving a memory
Obama’s motorcade raced back through town to the airport, where about 200 people gathered to catch one last glimpse of the presidential plane.
The temperature had started to drop, and the wind was kicking up. A youth baseball team cut short its practice and wandered over. The runway at the Watertown airport was too small to accommodate the president’s normal plane, so the White House had switched to a smaller 757, which taxied to the far end of the runway and gunned its engines.
“It’s going to get loud,” a mother warned her son, who plugged his ears.
The blue-and-white 757 with the presidential seal and “United States of America” roared down the runway, kicking up a cloud of dust and sand. All eyes turned skyward as the plane lifted off the ground.
Some filmed the takeoff with their cellphones. Others waved. They kept waving long after there was any chance that the president or anyone inside the plane could see them in the field below.
