President Obama’s Motorcade Draws Cheers, Onlookers
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – April 2, 2015 – Gephardt Daily
Commuters in northern Utah had an extra challenge to contend with Friday morning, but no one seemed to mind. It was a bit of history, after all, in the form of President Obama’s motorcade.
Mr. Obama was in Utah to announce a new clean-energy initiative during an address at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden.
Parts of I-15 and Legacy Highway between Salt Lake City and Ogden were shutdown for a while between 9 – 10 a.m.
Despite Utah’s standing as one of the reddest of the so-called red states, hundreds of spectators lined 600 South in SLC and found vantage points along the freeways to wave at the president and snap photos. Motorists stopped on southbound I-15 between Centerville and Kaysville got out of and stood on top of their cars to take pictures as the procession whizzed by. A few homemade signs spotted along the way, including “God Bless BO” and “Welcome to Utah President Obama”
[one_fourth]
[/one_fourth][three_fourth_last]
Motorcade wound its way to the West gate of HAFB in Clearfield, arrived at 9:49 a.m. While at Hill Air Force Base, the President participated in a roundtable discussion to hear from public officials, Utah residents, and veterans about their experience supporting renewable energy deployment, training workers to enter the solar industry, and working in the solar industry. Some of the participants in the roundtable are affiliated with Salt Lake Community College’s Solar Program, which is supported by the Department of Energy’s Solar Instructor Training Network, and will train transitioning military personnel at Hill Air Force Base as part of the Solar Ready Vets program.
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), U.S. Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT), Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker and Harry Briesmaster, Chief Civil Engineer, Hill Air Force Base also took part in Friday’s meeting.
Utah State Representative Brian King, Utah’s House Minority Leader) was invited to attend President Obama’s speech today and briefly met the President as he arrived “It’s a real honor, there’s no doubt about that, it’s a tremendous thing.” King said. “You know, one of the things we have here in Utah is that we don’t have a lot Democrats in terms of elected officials, there are only 17 of us. I was hoping to get a meeting with him and all of us local Democratic officials but there wasn’t time in his schedule.”
“Meeting him was a very thrilling thing, even though it was just for a moment, about 30 seconds, “King said. “He just struck me as a very real, very genuine person . He doesn’t have a lot of hair to let hair down, but he let it down. I was elected in 2008, and I told him it was an honor to be on the same ballot as him. He laughed and said ‘We’ve both had our hair get a lot grayer since then.’ He just struck me as a very low key, genuine person.”
