Columbus relishes 'hometown boy' being VP
"Before we just had Tony Stewart. Now we have the vice president.”
COLUMBUS, Ind. — At the Catholic parochial school where Vice President Mike Pence was a schoolboy, students sat transfixed as they watched someone who’d once walked their halls take the oath of office.
At city hall, roughly 70 workers, citizens and elected officials gathered to watch a man most of them know personally assume the second-highest office in the United States.
And on a welcome sign that earlier in the day had made claim only to being the birthplace of race car driver Tony Stewart, a new sign erected by midday proclaimed Columbus “Hometown of Michael R. Pence United States Vice President.”
Just as Pence assumed a new title Friday, so did Columbus. The Southern Indiana city known as the headquarters of Cummins Inc. and its Cummins-driven architectural style was coming to grasp with its new claim to fame — a place whose most famous son is a heartbeat away from the presidency.
A sizable contingent of the population was in Washington, D.C., to witness the event in person. That included Columbus’ mayor, the clerk-treasurer, local Republican Party leaders, business officials and members of the Pence family, which is still anchored to the town. There was considerable interest, too, in the parade, which included participation from the Columbus North High School band.
At Noble’s Barber Shop, three televisions were tuned into the inauguration in a shop that has a liquor license to keep patrons from getting thirsty while they wait. There were some mixed feelings about the occasion. The inexperience of Donald Trump — of course the real center of attention — is a concern to some people, said owner Clint Noble. And the religious freedom law Pence championed in Indiana — and opposed by Cummins — left the locals with a love-hate relationship about Pence, he said.
Yet, any reservations also were colored with hometown pride. “It’s great to see a Columbus native take office and be vice president,” Noble said. “He’s the first one, you know. Something to be proud of. Before we just had Tony Stewart. Now we have the vice president.”
At St. Bartholomew Catholic School, which Pence attended until the eighth grade in the early 1970s when the parish was known as St. Columba, there was little ambiguity to the day.
Pence, who later would make a oft-noted pivot to evangelicalism, was raised in a devout Catholic family. As a child, he was an altar boy and what a nun who was his teacher remembered as a "dream student," conscientious and mature for his age, someone so kind that at lunch he made a point to sit with the unpopular kids. His mother and much of his family remain members of what is now the St. Bartholomew parish.
And in his honor, most normal classwork in the parish school halted well ahead of noon. In the unlikely event anyone may have forgotten, a voice came over the public address system to remind the school that the inauguration was about to begin. The voice noted the success of Pence goes to show “You can achieve almost anything if you put your mind and heart to it.”
That message certainly came across loud and clear to the students.
“I think it’s really cool that somebody from here is somebody who is important in the world,” said sixth-grader Jack Schiavello, 12. “It makes me think I can do anything.”
The notion that a native son of Columbus was somebody important in the world has been settling in for for a while now.
Over the holidays, Schiavello saw a small fleet of black Chevy Suburbans roll through his neighborhood — a Pence motorcade on the way to the house of a Pence brother. Back in the fall, Victoria Lucas was shopping with her family at a local farmer’s market when Pence appeared, surrounded by a phalanx of dark suits. He walked up to a vendor to buy some vegetables — carrots, as best she can recall — as people gathered to snap photos. And just about every other kid in Melissa Tressler’s middle-school classrooms had their own Pence story — a grandma who’s a friend of Pence’s mother, a dad or an uncle who’s been a lifelong Pence friend, parents who took wedding photos for one of the Pence kids.
Seeing Pence’s familiar white coif flash across the screen, watching him take his oath in the middle of the pomp and circumstance, thinking that someone once like them was now so powerful was unanimously deemed “cool.” But, as Schiavello noted, the sight of all those men in dark suits around Pence on his recent visits was some reason for concern.
“It sort of makes me feel a little nervous because I feel if somebody doesn’t like him, he could be susceptible to an attack or something,” the boy said.
Such concerns aside, students and teachers responded with applause when Pence completed his oath. The same was true at the city hall, said Mary Ferdon, executive director of administration and the person in charge while the mayor was out of town. On the whole, it was a landmark occasion for Columbus.
“We got to watch a piece of history being made,” she said. “Having a hometown boy now the vice president of the United States is pretty exciting — aspirational.”
Call IndyStar reporter Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter: @RbtKing.
Hoosiers put on sequins, tuxes to fete Mike and Karen Pence