By Greta Lieske and Alyssa Hollingsworth
IV Leader staff
Little did President George W. Bush know it, but his mere
presence at a routine local event made a long-time goal and miracle come true
for one Illinois Valley Community College faculty member.
During the past summer, in late July, President Bush spoke at
an event near Peoria in support of Aaron Schock (R), who is running for
Congress. Dorene Perez, computer aided engineering instructor, and Jim Gibson,
electronics instructor, were attendees at the event.
According to Perez, of the roughly 1,250 guests only about 30
actually got to meet President Bush and shake his hand, of which she was one.
The moment “fulfilled a dream” for Perez and was extremely exciting since she
almost missed his visit in Peoria and just missed meeting him several other
times.
Perez first started to “admire” President Bush after she saw
tenacity in him during the 2000 election. “And then things happened like 9/11—of
course everyone admired him after that—he got reelected. And the night he got
reelected I said to my friend, ‘We need to go to the inaugural.’ So, we went to
the inauguration—we didn’t get to go to any balls of anything, but we stood
outside in the snow storm on Capitol Hill and it was great—it was like watching
history happen.”
The second sighting was when President Bush was speaking in
Effingham, Ill. a few months later. After President Bush’s speech at the event,
Perez just missed meeting him. “He was leaving and he started to shake hands and
sign autographs,” said Perez, “and we were kind of near the back and I was
trying to get my friend to go up there. I was like, ‘Go, go, go.’ And she was
like, ‘No. I don’t know if we can.’ So, I pushed her up there and just as we got
there, he moved away. He was about four feet from me. I was able to hand a
little journal I had to one of his Secret Service agents. He handed it back and
it had [President Bush’s] signature in it.”
After that moment, Perez wrote in the same journal some
goals, one of which was to meet President Bush face-to-face while he was still
President.
This past summer, Gibson called her and informed her of the
opportunity.
According to Gibson, he was well aware of Perez’s goal and
tried his hardest to get tickets to the Schock endorsement event through Putnam
County Republican Chairman, Kimrey Alleman, and another woman from Hennepin who
had tickets, but could not attend the event because of a death in the family.
His efforts paid off and he ended up getting four tickets, Gibson said.
The event was a black and white tie affair and was held in a
large air-conditioned tent on a polo field. There were 120 different colored
tables under the tent with flowers, which were shipped in from Hawaii, said
Perez.
“When you got in there it was gorgeous. It was like coming to
the king’s wedding,” added Perez. Gibson was especially impressed with Bush’s
speech and thought it was much better than he had first anticipated it would be.
“I actually cried three times during the President’s speech,” said Gibson. “[He]
spoke from his heart and was very humble. It was one of those moments in life
where everything made sense. It was more than I could have hoped for.”
In Bush’s speech, Perez noted that he mentioned an anecdote
about a rainbow signifying a miracle and she “kept thinking about how George W.
Bush didn’t know that he was making a miracle of [hers] come true. According to
Perez, she thought she was going to miss out on meeting President Bush another
time as he started to leave the tent after his speech, but she thought if she
got close enough, he would stop and shake her hand.
“Just as he shook the last hand,” said Perez, “he turned a
walked away. I was like, ‘no!’ He was already walking away and I just yell, ‘Mr.
President! Mr. President!’” laughed Perez.
“And he turned around and there was no one else except me and
him and he turned around and walked back towards me. I had a necklace with a
Chinese symbol on it and he looked at it and just kind of cocked his head and he
went, ‘what does that say?’ And I said, ‘it says peace.’ I said, ‘I’ve been
waiting to meet you for three years; I love you and I think you’re a great
president.’ He put his great big arm around me and he hugged me and kind of gave
me a little kiss on the head—a peck on the head. From there on I don’t remember
anything,” laughed Perez.
Gibson witnessed the meeting from a distance and said that
the evening “exceeded all of their expectations.
Perez is the faculty advisor for the IVCC Young Republicans
and Gibson is co-advisor.