My party is over! Our Fourth of July party was a huge success
last week. We had over a thousand people at the Fairmont hotel, and I was on my
feet for seven hours working setup, check in and takedown. I did get to mix and
mingle for about an hour, and met a nice Texan who is here doing basketball
camps for little kids.
I also popped in for the toast at our donor reception and
met some folks from Little Caesars. Since I worked in Detroit, that meant
something to me. I talked to them for awhile told them I where I’d worked and
talked about Mr. Ilitch’s contributions to Detroit and his love of the city,
the Red Wings and the Tigers (though not necessarily in that order). The man
did so much for Detroit, and for those there, the whole pizza pizza thing was
an afterthought. It was interesting to meet people who had no idea of his works
outside Little Caesars.
Anyway, I got home from that at midnight and was up the next
day for final preparations of an “S” visit – the Secretary of State was to be
in town Sunday and Monday to pick up an award from the World Petroleum
Conference in Istanbul.
This was the first time I’ve worked such a visit and oh my,
the prep work that goes into it. Since I was planning the Fourth, I was spared
of this but man, watching my colleagues kick it into gear. My friend Meltem
pretty much organized the hotel logistics, and that’s a lot of rooms.
I did work the event, but I feel I had the easy part –
baggage. Of all the moving parts going on with unconfirmed meetings and such,
the two things we knew – when he’d come and when he’d go – were pretty much
set. So I felt I got off easy, and would sign up for that gig anytime.
It was time-consuming, though. The stint requires you to get
to the airport in plenty of time (coming and going) and stand on the sweltering
hot tarmac until the plans arrives, then waiting on the formalities to be over
and the motorcade to leave and then gathering the bags and taking them to the
hotel. Upon return, you have to go to the hotel, collect and tag the stuff,
then take to the airport in plenty of time. But the kicker is even though you’re
done, you have to wait on the plane to leave just in case there’s some kind of
delay that entails people to stay overnight.
So the fun part about that is, when you’re out on the tarmac
and one of your colleagues, the TSA guy, asks if he can look inside, you get to go too.
So yeah, I did the geeky photo thing outside the plane, but I also did it
inside, too.
Really, knowing nothing about planes (I got a quickie – won’t
say crash – course from the TSA guy, who’s quite the guru) it mostly looked
like a total business class flight but with computers instead of video screens.
There was also the S office, with a regular looking desk and a little sofa
across from it. You better believe I sat on the sofa and got a picture.
Three Stanley Cups and I never played superfan and drank out
of it, held it or took a picture of myself with it but I was all over that
plane. Hey, it’s mine – I’m a taxpayer!
And in it all, I did have a brief moment to attend the meet
and greet. S – Rex Tillerson – came off as very informed and gracious and said
he’d made a vow to “shake the hand of every State Department employee,” and
then proceeded to do so with everyone in the crowded room. Very classy.
But it was quite a relief to have a safe “wheels up” and
have the ordeal over. Now, it’s back to regular work, only I’ve been planning
that Fourth party for so long that I don’t really remember what regular work
is.
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