In the News
Rochester man will revel in inauguration
Matthew Stolle
January 17, 2009
When Barack Obama is sworn in as the nation's first black president on Tuesday, George Thompson of Rochester plans to be there, one person amid a jostling mass of humanity.
But not everyone will have Thompson's vantage. His personal perspective on the presidential inauguration will be as someone who has seen within his own lifetime just how far America has come.
Many people have read that history; Thompson has lived it.
Thompson was raised in a world of segregated drinking fountains, bathrooms and public accommodations. As an 11-year-old boy living in St. Louis, his father told him how to avoid getting maimed or killed before taking a trip to Mississippi. If you're walking down a sidewalk and you see a white person coming, step off the sidewalk. Don't look them in the eye.
Thompson was also a student at Clark College in Atlanta in the early 1960s when the civil rights movement was orchestrating sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. Recruiters were combing the campus for students who would have the self-restraint to not react if hot soup were poured on their heads.
The fact is that Thompson, who moved to Rochester in 1968, worked at IBM for 28 years and was former executive director of the Diversity Council, never expected to see a black person sworn in as president in his lifetime.
"That's why it's so important to go," Thompson said. "I had to kind of touch myself after the election to see (that it had actually happened). Still, we want to go out there and make sure."
Truth be told, Thompson didn't intend to attend the inauguration at first. Thompson, a board member of the St. Paul Foundation and former chairman of the Blandin Foundation board of trustees, planned to watch it at home, relaxing. But his son, George Jr., a minister and highly persuasive individual, began a long-distance campaign from his Los Angeles home to convince his dad that they had to attend the inauguration together.
"He's kind of like, 'We've got to be part of this monumental change.' He said, 'Barack is not going to be able to fix things all by himself,'" Thompson recalled, chuckling at this son's insistence.
The biggest obstacle was getting inaugural tickets. It was a sign of his son's persuasiveness that he soon had Thompson beating the bushes for them. Thompson sent out some notes. Soon afterward, Congressman Tim Walz's office called back with news that it had two tickets for the father and son.
Despite the anticipated hassles, Thompson said, he is looking forward to the "phenomenal" event. It will signify, from the perspective of one man's life, just how far America has traveled.
"I've seen it. I've witnessed it. I've been a part of it," Thompson said.
© 2009 Post Bulletin. Used by permission.
