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President Clinton
This brings us to #3. President Clinton.
So Jerry, you say, this is a stainless steel football with a
bunch of Seahawks personnel and other football people. What does
President Clinton have to do with any of this?
He is a former President! Do I need any better logic? LOL!
Yeah, that was my thought process! If you really want me to draw
some kind of correlation, I would just have to say that, President
Clinton signed the ball when he was in town doing a signing to
promote his new book, “Giving”. By the time I got
around to having him sign it, I knew that this ball would eventually
end up going to charity. So, because of what this ball had become,
what it was going to be used for, the fact that he is a former
President and his book message was all about giving, I figured
it was perfect.
So, I went to the University Book Store in the U-District, waited
in line for probably 7 or 8 hours, and finally got the opportunity
to have him sign it.
Sounds easy, right? Not quite!
The whole time I was there, we were being told that we could
not take anything with us when we met him, especially no backpacks
with big, heavy, metal objects in it. When I saw someone who looked
like they might be able to approve such a thing, I always got
the same answer, “No, sorry!” |
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When you are standing
in line for such a long time you end up talking quite a bit with
the people around you. They all thought the ball was pretty cool.
In fact, there was a news crew there, and they got me to go say
something to them. The news crew ended up asking me a few questions,
and I was hoping that it might help me in my quest to get President
Clinton to sign the ball. But, it didn’t, not a bit. As
the time grew nearer for President Clinton to arrive, I knew the
only way this was going to work was to get him to approve it himself.
I had some pictures of the ball with me. When we finally got up
to him, the guy in front of me helped set it up. I mean, it really
felt nice. Here we are, we get a few seconds to say one thing
to the President, and this guy uses some of that limited time
to give me a plug. It really helped break the ice, and I couldn’t
think of a better way for it to go.
The guy in front of me, just before he was about to walk away,
said to the President, “This guy right here is working on
something really cool, you should help him out.” It was
perfect! Then all I had to do was show the President the pictures,
explain to him that it was going to end up going toward charity,
and ask him to sign it. He said, “Sure”, looked over
to his secret service, told them it was ok, and from there everything
was cool. I went over and got my backpack, got the football out
and gave it to the secret service guys, and they handled it from
there.
I did have to wait until every single person had gone through,
along with all the staff that was there. It was the last thing
the President signed. I couldn’t believe it! I had just
gotten a former United States President to sign the ball. It was
at that very moment that I knew this thing was becoming a monster.
Way bigger than I could have ever originally imagined.
I got a safe deposit box for the ball the very next day. |
