'He's Springfield's president.' Marker commemorates Obama's historic campaign events

To help brave the temperature hovering around 10 degrees on Feb. 10, 2007, when Barack Obama launched his presidential bid in Springfield, Ward 8 Ald. Erin Conley promised her three grade school-age kids as much hot chocolate as they needed.

"I told them, 'This is a really remarkable, historic day and I think we'll want to remember this for a long time,'" Conley recalled telling her children. "We got to experience history."

Now that day and Aug. 23, 2008, when Obama introduced Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate at the same Old State Capitol Plaza, are being commemorated with a plaque that now stands on the grounds' southeast corner.

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Gov. JB Pritzker, Illinois Department of Natural Resources Director Colleen Callahan, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch and Obama Foundation Executive Vice President Michael Strautmanis were among the speakers in the 20-minute ceremony in Representative Hall on Wednesday.

The marker was designed by graphic artist Michael Patrick and manufactured at Ace Sign Co. David Joens, president of the Old State Capitol Foundation and a board member of the Illinois State Historical Society, wrote the text.

The work cost $2,961.58, according to Justin Blandford, the Old State Capitol site superintendent, and was split between the Old State Capitol Foundation and Illinois State Historical Society.

Springfield, Strautmanis said, is "a special place" when it comes to Obama's story not only because of the historic nature of the announcements, but because it proved to be a formative time when he served three terms in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2005.

"He did learn lessons here he carried to the White House, lessons around building coalitions, lessons about working together," said Strautmanis afterward. "He comes to Springfield as a young Black man from the South Side of Chicago and he gets work done with people from rural Illinois and downstate Illinois and people from across the aisles. Those relationships stayed with him."

Mayor Jim Langfelder, who was present for the Biden announcement, remembered the enthusiasm of the crowd on a day that put Springfield on the world stage.

"(News) goes back to that picture (of Obama and Biden) and it puts Springfield on the map time and time again," Langfelder said.

The Old State Capitol was where Abraham Lincoln, who had just won the Republican nomination for U.S. senator, delivered his "House Divided" speech in 1858. Lincoln lost the senatorial race to Stephen A. Douglas, but was elected president two years later.

Obama mentioned Lincoln several times in his 2007 speech.

Langfelder said when he addresses community groups, he draws the correlation between Lincoln and Obama.

"You had the great emancipator and the first African American president," Langfelder said. "What I call the arc or the bridge in the middle is the 1908 Race Riots, which led to the formation of the NAACP. No other city has had as much influence on race relations than Springfield because of those three dynamics."

The plaque, Langfelder said, "codifies (Obama's) presence here."

State Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, said she remembered standing outside the Old State Capitol at the 2007 launch with her children thinking "all things were possible" with Obama.

"And now we see how that moment has evolved over the course of these years," Turner said. "We have to continue to keep that same energy, that same hope and that same belief that all things are possible."

Teresa Haley recalled that she was hosting a state committee meeting of the NAACP when word broke that Obama was going to launch his campaign.

"We left our meeting at the Crowne Plaza and came over (to the Old State Capitol)," recalled Haley, president of the Springfield chapter and state conference of the NAACP. "We were freezing cold, shivering but so excited.

"Springfield, we claim President Barack Obama as our own. He's Springfield's president as well as the state of Illinois' president."

Connie Locher-Bussard, 90, of Springfield attended both campaign announcements. Years before, Locher-Bussard, a registered and licensed dietitian, saw Obama in action as chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee.

"I walked out of a committee hearing with our lobbyist saying, 'My God, that man is going somewhere,'" Locher-Bussard recalled. "He handled people so deftly. He took everything he did seriously. He never took himself seriously. I think that's what makes him such a good and decent man."

In his 2007 speech, Pritzker said, Obama laid out a vision "where change was possible, progress was near and hope would prevail above all. Fifteen years, four presidential elections and one pandemic later, that vision remains as powerful as ever.

"To me, this marker is a reminder that one of our favorite sons brought a message of hope that resonated at a crucial time to people all across the world."

Conley, who was once a rules analyst for the Joint Committee for Administrative Rules when Obama was one of the Senate members of the committee, said the plaque was long overdue.

"It's wonderful," Conley said. "I'm glad it's going where it is. This is a good thing to have in downtown Springfield."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Plaque commemorating President Obama's Springfield appearances erected