Election Day - Obama Headquaters

Across town, Phyllis Randall was busy working at the Obama headquarters in Leesburg, where the buzz of anticipation filled the offices and spilled over to the sidewalks outside.  "For the most part of the day, I've been driving, taking people to the polls," Phyllis said.  "I took a 94-year-old woman who said she hadn't had this feeling since Kennedy."  She also brought her two boys, 14 and 12 respectively, to help out.  "I said to them, you're going to want to tell your children, your great-grandchildren, that you helped Senator Obama get elected."  

And indeed they will be able to do that. 

The boys' great-grandfather, Phyllis' grandfather, was a Pullman Porter who traveled to Washington,DC in August 1963 to mark with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Phyllis had both grandparents on her mind a few days after Barack Obama's historic win. 

"I'm driving down Constitution Avenue and there's a place you can look back and see the White House.   I burst into tears.  I was sobbing over the enormity of it all, that African American slaves laid the first bricks.  And I thought, Oh my God, Grandma and Grandpa, look what we just did.  It was an amazing thing that we just did." 

She added, "We didn't do it as African Americans.  We did it as Americans."