Op-Ed: Mr. Clinton Comes to Town: Honesty, Integrity and Truth Finally Shines on Columbus

It started out a normal day for me on October 14th.

Then it wasn't. You never know how your day is going to go...until it does.

I got an unexpected call from a neighbor and friend and church choirmate at the ungodly hour of 9 am and all I'm hearing is a scream in my good ear "Get down here quick! President Clinton is coming to town and he'll be here at 10! People are already parking and this is historic, so you need to get your press pass and get down here right away!"

I'm just a teeny bit blase' about it because I've met so many people and done so much in my lifetime, and lately, I've been going through a lot personally, so meeting Bill Clinton, in town campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States is, for me, a scene I'd grown so accustomed to that when I retired, I meant Tired before Re.

And when they speak of Six Degrees of Separation, I guarantee you I'm within one step closer, no matter which direction I turn, of meeting most of the most famous people in the world.

Yes, it's historic. 

Yes, the closest I've ever come to meeting a U.S. President in person is George H.W. Bush and he was speeding past us on his way to church on a Sunday luncheon during a visit to the Potomac in Washington, DC., entourage in tow.

It was 911 season, the wound to the United States was still open and bleeding, White House tours were cancelled and sharpshooters were stationed all over the Capitol Building, so there was no getting past the fence that kept us 20 feet away from our legislators.

Things were so non-sequitter at the time that when I mentioned how Bush sped past us on his way to church, accompanied by his complete entourage, and that's the closest I ever got to a U.S. President, someone asked me "Why would you want to meet him?"

I had no particular desire to meet Bush, or Clinton, or anyone else who wasn't paying me to be bothered to take the time, but her call sounded urgent, so I decided to dress and go, not sure what to expect. I wasn't coming for set news, I was wondering if an opportunity was going to present itself for me to get an angle on exactly what Clinton was doing in Columbus.

I went, but I wasn't flashing my press pass at this time for a couple of reasons I won't go into; but suffice it to say that I wasn't officially vetted. I'd never filled out the paperwork to be on the list of news agencies, and my organization isn't big enough or well-known enough to get past the BigWig News that was coming from all over East Alabama and middle Georgia, as well as Atlanta and nationwide.

I didn't know the gathering was "left wide open" with Secret Service weaving in and out of the rather moderate crowd until I arrived--parking across from the building on Macon Road at an abandoned bank, or what might have been an old funeral home.

I made my way across and saw the three people in the crowd I sought, one of them the one who kept ringing my phone off the hook until I arrived. 

I walked up to them and waved hello, but Clinton had not quite arrived yet. It would be another 1.5 hours before he did show up. They had already been there for an hour, so it was 2 and 1/2 hours for them.

So I'm standing there yapping it up with them and holding my recorder and camera out to see if I could get enough of an edge to write an article about this "historic" visit, but I was at the end of the line and outside the line of waiting persons trying to get in the door. Of course, if I was getting paid to be there, I'd have been all in the mix of the moment. My news reporter instincts are always prepared to kick in if it means pay is associated with it, -smile-.

Next thing I know, someone comes out and says there are too many people outside and the building can only hold fifty people (there was closer to 100), so they are going to have to set up a stand outside.

I watch carefully as the organizers put up a makeshift podium outside, and then they tell us to turn around, and suddenly, I who was in the back is in the very front right under the newly installed podium and the well taped together walk up step.

No red carpets, no golden thrones or Baalistic images, and no over-bloated fanfare...

Okay...so I figured since it was open standing, I would take a few more shots and record some of the speakers so I could shore up a short news report...and then appears from out of seemingly everywhere, the man himself.

Former President Bill Clinton standing right in front of me, less than a foot away, and all the others who happened to be in front when they told us to turn around.

Then I notice also two Secret Service Agents, actually three, two on both sides of the podium and one next to him peering into the crowd with ice cold steel grey-blue eyes like "I will shoot a mofo in a heartbeat and not care if they live or die".

The lady Agent on the end looked like she wasn't about the games either, and I never noticed the other Secret Service Agent standing directly behind me until Knowa showed up on his Instagram page with the above photo, taken by his mother.

As President Clinton was speaking, you will hear my friend shouting out in the background "Where's my candy apple?!" And he heard and responded in his own funny Clintonesque way about how proud she'd be of him for not eating one and how he gave it to someone else with a 'faster metabolism.' Yep, that was all over PBS and everywhere else.

But he wasn't there for Q&A, just stumping, so he finished speaking and then wound back through the crowd to shake hands and presumably kiss whatever babies were there, but there were no little ones - yet a very ambitious young man named Knowa De Baraso, who has met quite a few celebrities and dignitaries in his own lifetime.

As President Clinton approached my area, he shook hands, and when he got to me he shook my right hand, then reached back over again and squeezed my left hand; then as someone else was reaching from behind me to shake his hand, he reached down and grabbed my right hand again and squeezed it.

I'm thinking "Hm. That's three." 

Maybe he didn't realize he touched the same hand more than once, but my "WAKE THAT BUTT UP!" friend said "No. Three is a number of significance. It means completion."

The Biblical significance of three, beside the obvious --one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit-- means "the power of indivisibility."

I've gone full circle and come around right.

At that moment, it hit me. 

All of the preconceived notions I'd ever had or read or envisioned about William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States,  melted away. It was scary how much I felt like I was actually a part of this nation for the first time in my life and I had refused to vote for him in the 1990s -- just because I thought him shifty-seeming. But there's also the fact that time and age can change anyone, and if we grow old correctly, we grow wiser and more passionate, not bitter and unredeemingly crusty as the words that come out of Donald  Trump's mouth.

He seemed honest and sincere and determined to see through a win for Vice President Kamala D. Harris, and he was purely concerned about this nation's future NOT DIVISIBLE under Donald Trump.

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, stumps in Columbus GA

I have a sixth sense about fakes and Clinton wasn't faking in the least. It was utter pure deep concern for the future of this nation, and I understood the assignment. His and mine.

To know Earth, Sun and Moon; body, mind and spirit; past present, and future; and birth, life and death all at the same time is a multiplicitous full cycle.

As much as I had always felt I was never a part of this country and didn't much care for it, Bill Clinton's soft eyes, warm touch and unflinching heartfelt care for everyone who had the nerve and unmitigated gall to show up and let him know WE care was embracing.

If he was just "politicking," nobody could tell. Some experience will let you flow right into the season at the right moment in time.

Floral Designer & Singer Glenda "Gigi" Crawford, Photojournalist Ed Crawford and Author-Playwright Stephanie Perryman

The Three Acts of a completed story -- if you can see it all at once, you have arrived, and you already know how it ends. Because you understand the process it took to build that story's basis and to form the basis for your own life. 

Once that happens, purpose becomes clear.

The United States of American can't afford for a Donald Trump character to ever sit in the Oval Office again. If he does, we will be MADA: Make America Divided Again, divisible, with no liberty, and no justice for all. AGAIN.

FOUNTAIN CITY NEWS proudly and enthusiastically endorses Madam Vice President, Kamala Devi Harris, for President of the United States and Minnesota Governor Timothy James Walz for Vice President of the United States.