A massive celebration in Chicago

By Michael Paulson
Globe Staff
CHICAGO -- They flew in from Louisville and Seattle, or just took the subway from the South Side.
They wore Obama hats and T-shirts and buttons, carried Obama dolls and waved Obama signs.
The lucky 80,000 or so gathered in Grant Park’s Hutchinson Field to see Obama in person, but hundreds of thousands more lined the lakefront and the Magnificent Mile, watching on TVs or listening through loudspeakers. The bars were packed with people glued to television sets, the streets with people checking results on their phones.
Many of them added buttons that said simply, “I was there.”

The windy city went wild for democracy last night. A downtown skyscraper, the Blue Cross building, spelled out USA in white lights. The grand hotels of Michigan Avenue, 40 years ago the site of riots during the Democratic Convention, were festooned with red-white-and-blue bunting, while in Grant Park, named for the Civil War general, many waved American flags in the air.
"It’s the front row of history, literally, today,’’ said Tom Krieglstein, 28, of Chicago, who arrived at Grant Park at 7:30 p.m. Monday, spending a night outdoors to be first in line to get a seat managed to be first in line by showing up at 7:30 last night – he slept for a bit in a bus station and a hotel lobby, while his brother held his place
Archie Garomondeh, a 27-year-old Liberian-American, flew to Chicago from Louisville yesterday morning, hoping to see Obama.
“I wanted to be here to be a part of making history, and I want to be on the ground where the history will be made,’’ he said.
And Teri McClain, 41, flew in from Seattle and spent the afternoon wandering through the crowds wearing a white sandwich board reading “Please take me as your guest to the rally.” She had at least 7 Obama buttons along her neckline, an Obama T-shirt, an Obama doll in her front pocket, and an American flag in her back pocket. McClain, who fretted that her name too closely resembles McCain, is a bit of an Obama groupie – she works for Alaska Airlines, so she travels for free, and she said she has been to 18 Obama rallies, has hugged him three times, and has 17 autographs.
“I got hooked when he went to Key Arena (in Seattle) in February,’’ she said. “He has brought so many people together.’’
Inside Grant Park, the tens of thousands of people, most of them young and most of whom obtained tickets through an Obama web site sign-up, stood shoulder to shoulder, watching a broadcast on CNN as state after state fell to Obama.
“I’m a history teacher, and I wanted to see history made,’’ said Sophia Logothetis, 27, who teaches 8th grade in the Chicago public schools. “I’m so glad the next time our history books are printed, this is the next chapter.’’
The crowd in the park and on the streets was strikingly multiracial, and many said they never thought they would see an African-American elected president.
“I figured progress would come about with a senator here or a governor there, but I didn’t think the top rung was for anybody but a Caucasian,’’ said Ervin Ricks, 54, a retired Chicago police officer.
Eden Jean, 31, joined the crowd even though she isn’t an American citizen – she is Ethiopian, but is married to an American and raising their 2-year-old daughter in Chicago.
“For my daughter, this is so significant to see that there’s no limits,’’ she said. “I never thought I would see this. Not in my lifetime.”
On the streets, a festival atmosphere dominated. On Congress Parkway, where the crowds waited for access to the fields, there was a man posing for photographers wearing a pinstriped baseball uniform with the name Obama and the number 08, a young woman selling T-shirts saying “Obama 08/Grant Park/I Was There,’’ and a teenager was playing an electronic version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” on his guitar. On Roosevelt Boulevard, across from the entrance to the press area, a union hung a banner reading “Local ironworkers support Barack Obama for president,” and a station wagon drove by covered in quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., blaring Obama speeches from a bullhorn, with, on its roof, a giant picture of Obama and the words “The dream comes true.’’
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.