A Tale of Two Cities: President Clinton Visits ISU

ladies and gentlemen the President and Vice President of the United States on April 25th 1995 history was made on the Iowa State University campus President of the United States Bill Clinton Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman all came to the ISU campus to participate in the national rural conference held in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union the conference was a chance for the three members of the u.s. executive branch to meet with select rural leaders farmers and agribusiness people about the concerns of the rural economy with the country's leadership in Ames on that day the ISU campus literally became the White House with scores of presidential staff members accompanying the entourage with this came some monumental logistical tasks for many in the Iowa State community the incredible pride and energy that people brought to bear and preparing for it and the sense of satisfaction they had with its success we're really astounding there were over 700 people mainly volunteers who helped pull this thing off from people who handed our tickets and served as asurs at Hilton Coliseum to people in the telecommunications area that put together this incredible communications network that's part of the presidency we really had two weeks of real time to work in preparation for the event this is a very very short time on a university campus the university normally is a rather slow-moving kind of mechanism for getting things done and all of a sudden we've got a project that has a very short timeline heavy demands a lot of unusual requests coming at us they needed bookcases built at the last minute built stained and varnished and installed yet that night so at six o'clock Monday night before the presidential visit we start cutting up oak plywood and building bookcases well I got home around 6:30 Monday evening and the phone call the phone rang and Lin sealer was on the phone asking for a strange favor and what he asked for which I surprised me a lot was he needed a large number of agricultural books to put on some bookshelves that the physical plant staff had just finished making for the Great Hall so I ended up pulling together some staff from the library and we started working around 7:30 in the evening and put together around six hundred and seventy five books ultimately ended on some rolling carts that we transported from the library to the Memorial Union and there were people at 11 o'clock at night literally hauling stacks of books from the parks library to the Memorial Union to add that extra special dimension to a conference that I think everybody was really impressed by originally had started with a quite a simple table that was to be draped and draperies or cloth or linen of some kind and it graduated to what was considered a fine piece of furniture I received the order to build the table the final drawings to build a table on Thursday evening and it had to be finished by 4:00 o'clock the next day so that the the finishes could be applied because of Bill Clinton's of allergies there can't be any polyurethane applied to furniture that he'll be around 72 hours before he's there so we were rushed to finish it before Saturday morning so that it would be free of of gases and he wouldn't be affected by it Josh King was the artistic director at the Union at the Great Hall and he visited the parse library and insisted that we move the Grant Wood murals from the library to form a backdrop for them for the conference table and then in the setting and was a little bit surprised when I said absolutely no I think he knew that but to that point we tried to be very accommodating in meeting all those needs we didn't have enough furniture in the lounge's and so we brought furniture from the hotel rooms down and so the crew got quite a workout we had quite a combined effort from general service and from the custodial staff here lifting some of those Haida beds down through the elevators and it was pretty extensive they were gonna fly up a lighting designer from Florida to do the lights so they called him up and he said no just move the lights around like this and call me back in an hour and I could talk a blind man through this focus so as it turned out that was pretty good because the guy that we had on the crew that day to focus the lights is legally blind an hour later I found myself moving from chair to chair with a light meter in one hand and a cellphone in the other talking to two guys that couldn't see what was going on things really started to cook Sunday morning 8 o'clock Sunday morning we had a crew in the in the Great Hall laying carpet 5000 feet of carpet squares and that was how we started her Sunday morning by Sunday evening we had the carpet down we had platforms in place and we had the the the conference table set up where we wanted it to be a very long day for a lot of people when they put the carpet down they taped it to the floor and when they pulled the carpet up and pulled the tape up it left lines all the way across the Great Hall so the custodians had to go in and scrub the floor with her on their hands and knees trying to get the residue from the tape that was still left off the White House communications people wanted their bill the day of the event at 10 o'clock in the morning on that Tuesday and then they paid it with a Visa Card we worked directly with the stewards there were three of them they watched us while we were preparing the food they had to know my name and they wanted to know spices that I was adding when I was you know spicing it up some of the food and I finally I said is if there's something you know he'd prefer I would be happy to change or use something else and they said no that if there is a they just and they're writing everything down and they said that was just in case there was an allergic reaction or something happened they just want notes and information to go back later to to check I have not done a bomb suite before I've done a lot of interesting things in my life but had never done a bomb suite I came in at 3:30 and I came in to be supportive of the bomb suite I was called to the ground floor because there was a brown package that was tied what had happened was one of our staff members in and being neat and tidy had tied up about four tiles after he had finished a project and set him off to the side and the Secret Service were not sure that that wasn't a bomb there was a pop machine which we couldn't find a key to and since we couldn't open it we had to move it out of the building there was a another credenza type piece of furniture up in the basketball offices that no one has ever had a key to we have no idea what's in the drawer but it was removed from the premises at one point I looked out at both of the ashtrays that were outside the entrance to the Union and they were filled with debris old apple cores and orange peeling and sack and gum wrappers and things that persons had deposited as they waited to come in I went outside and cleaned up poured those into the sack walk back inside the building and the Secret Service we're on me and thank you president jiske and all of you at Iowa State for making us feel so welcome I thank the band for playing and I'm glad they provided seats for you to see the event when I used to play at things like this they never gave us a seat so I'm glad to see your smiling faces and thank you singers for singing and for looking so wonderful up there as as soon as he's said his last he usually ends with in god bless america we were to break into song and that was to cover that moment of applause this guy comes running up the steps and I mean he's used almost his attitude was almost angry like he couldn't believe we were all leaving and he was getting us all back together and said the president has requested to meet you personally backstage we were led actually down stairs across the main floor of hint of Hilton then down the back and sort of the basement entrance there the east entrance to the Hilton Coliseum where there's a huge sort of cavernous area there where they were the two black limousines waiting for the president and the vice president we started singing this African piece that he had requested and then that's when he walked out I was pretty neat and then the president came up and he wanted to know what is that what are those words mean and I told him that means we are so glad you were here then he waited into the choir and shook hands eventually they got to the point where they were actually a part of the choir I think surprisingly President Clinton was overwhelmed with the singing I'm sure he's heard a lot of singing groups but he seemed really impressed with our group it's a an incredible experience to have the chance to sing for the president and vice president and for him to have decided to give some extra time to to greet this group was really really special something they won't when we were able to work out this opportunity for our students and our faculty to come and sit on the stage and observe I believe they were provided an opportunity that any one individual only gets maybe once in a generation they saw the president the vice president the governor a senator other cabinet officers all in the same room all within a few feet of each other they realized at that moment that the President of the United States and the Vice President were right there you know in a room that were commonly in setting up and everything it was just kind of a unique feeling I guess the day of I started getting kind of nervous on the way over here thinking you know we're cooking and preparing food for the president in the United States the banter that went on as we assembled the table always came down to well this is Bill's spot or or bill will will sit here and I will sit here of course certainly there's a bit of pride in the idea that the president will be there and and this will essentially be part of the of the whole program looking back I guess I was amazed at the willingness of everybody just a pitch in and do what needed to get done and I was staying found out that people could work together and when there was something major that needed to be done that and everyone chipped in and made it happen preparation for the event was the outstanding piece for me not not really the event itself and getting to know a whole group of people across the university that I had not previously known was fun kind of a general rule of thumb for me is anything involving the president double your staff and double your food and be prepared for absolutely the wildest you know type of event I think the reaction from people here is is initially was exhaustion everybody was just really tired a bit of a fog now they look back on it and say yeah that was fun this was like probably the most important thing that we'd ever set up for heroness just fun to be a part of that it's absolutely phenomenal that over 700 people had their heads and hands in it and we got it done it was in a very real sense a moment demonstration of great pride and capability we pulled off the first ever National Rural conference as well as it can possibly be done I want to thank the president of this fine University and all the people who have worked so hard to make this a success I want to remind all of you I think you can see today that we care a lot about these issues I have learned a lot and we will act on what we have learned thank you so very much you