As I wrote a recent article in Illinois Meetings + Events about the opening of the highly anticipated Obama Presidential Center in June in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side—and the abundant meeting spaces and amenities the center will offer planners—it brought me back some 17 years. During the evening on the day Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was elected president, Nov. 4, 2008, I was scared that I was about to become a not-so-great dad. My pregnant wife, Bonnie Berger; her parents; and I sat on the beds in Bonnie’s and my hotel room at the La Quinta Inn & Suites Flagstaff in Arizona watching the results come in state by state. The networks called the race for Sen. Obama at 11 p.m.
But we weren’t in Flagstaff to watch the election returns. The next morning, we had a predawn check-in for Bonnie’s procedure to give birth to our firstborn son by cesarean section at Flagstaff Medical Center. As we watched the election of the country’s first Black president unfold, I was thinking mostly about how in the world I could calm a crying child, change a diaper, and myriad other things all other parents seem to instinctively know how to do.
The next day, as we got to the hospital room after our son Ben was born, I walked across the room and plopped myself into the armchair next to Bonnie’s bed, happy to get the chance to relax. Ben was in a bassinet next to the bed, and the nurse peeked inside his diaper. She said, “Dad, he needs a change. Badly.” Stunned for a moment that she was asking me to handle this problem, I was subsequently so, so appreciative of the nurse’s guidance as I struggled with my first diaper change. It was rather ham-handed, but it also was my first lesson in trial by fire as a parent. I didn’t realize it then, but I now know that is pretty much how everyone learns how to take care of and raise a child. You do what needs to be done when it needs to be done, and your kid certainly lets you know if you are temporarily oblivious. It is like meeting planning, if you think about it.
Seventeen years later, in a full circle moment, I hope to take teenage Ben to the Obama Presidential Center soon. Years in the making, the site will be a remarkable gathering place built not only as a monument to one man, but also as a celebration of the many ordinary people who made the center and his story possible. Across its 19.3 acres, meeting planners will gain inspiration and find much to like.
