Sunday, May 11, 2008
By Erin Quinn
Tribune-Herald staff writer
CRAWFORD — By 5 p.m. Saturday, the gift shops along the main drag here had sold out of their “Jenna and Henry” coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments and mouse pads.
Big-city media trucks topped with fancy satellite contraptions had parked up the street, interviewed visitors clad in shorts, then moved on.
For those patient enough, five white charter buses — presumably filled with wedding guests — breezed through town on the way to President Bush’s nearby ranch, then just as fast disappeared beyond security barriers.
And the day that some locals called “Crawford’s last hurrah” had come and gone.
Aside from a tiny band of anti-gay protesters from Topeka, Kan., the town of Crawford, population 750, was mostly quiet the day first daughter Jenna Bush and fiance Henry Hager wed at the Bush ranch before about 200 friends and family. White House officials steadfastly proclaimed the affair private.
So it stayed, with only snippets of information dribbling out, such as the fact the president and first daughter danced to the song “You are So Beautiful.”
The ceremony began about a half-hour or so before sunset, reports say. The couple stood at a cross, made of beige-hued Texas limestone, erected near the ranch’s manmade lake.
Even without the prying eyes of strangers, Jenna’s marriage to her longtime boyfriend made presidential history. It will be remembered as an upbeat moment of Bush’s two-term presidency beset by terrorism, war and the nation’s currently limp economy.
“This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband, Henry,” Bush said in his Saturday radio address. “It’s also a special time for Laura, who this Mother’s Day weekend will watch a young woman we raised together walk down the aisle.”
Town business during the president’s stays at his 1,600-acre ranch just west of here was once good, but that was before the war in Iraq turned increasingly controversial and the president’s public approval ratings began to slide.
Even so, some curious tourists took notice of Saturday’s blessed occasion. They toted cameras around their necks and carried bags of Bush-themed memorabilia from the few remaining souvenir shops.
The marquee in front of the jam-packed Coffee Station, where Jenna Bush herself has dined and eaten fried jalapenos, read: “Congrats Jenna and Henry.”
A homeowner nearby decorated plastic ornamental geese in the yard with wedding veils.
Some in Crawford reveled in occasional encounters with members of the Bush-Hager wedding party, including Fran Shelton of the Coffee Station. She served lunch Friday to one of Jenna’s bridesmaids.
“She was just a real cute girl,” Shelton said. “She was with three other girls. She said she was in Jenna’s ‘house party.’ ”
Shelton said she assumed that meant she was a bridesmaid. She then saw on the news that night that Jenna was calling the wedding party her “house party.”
Three members of the Crawford High School cheerleading team enthusiastically held up posters outside, trying to persuade visitors on their way to the Bush ranch to detour into town long enough to patronize their car wash, bake sale and garage sale, all to raise money for uniforms.
Cheerleaders Austin Rogers and Kayla Bruce, both 14, lined the streets waving posters for two days, hoping to take advantage of the increased traffic flow through town.
“It’s actually been very slow,” Rogers said. “Very slow.”
Out near the ranch, a lone Secret Service agent sat parked beyond security barriers at Mattlage and Prairie Chapel roads, the intersection that three years ago saw thousands of anti-war protesters led by Cindy Sheehan.
But even here, the tone was now different. The friendly agent talked casually with curious tourists and journalists who trickled by. He let them take photos of the barriers before they motored off.
True to their word, officials at the Crawford Texas Peace House — ordinarily given to protesting the war any time President Bush is at his ranch — opted to shelve any demonstrations this weekend, which locally based peace activist Kay Lucas said would have been “tacky.”
On Saturday, a large, red billboard was propped outside the Crawford Texas Peace House that read: “Peace to the Newlyweds.” It was decorated with hearts, doves, the happy couple’s names — and a peace sign.
“We had discussed whether we should protest today,” 56-year-old Dallas resident Rusty Tomlinson said. “We decided people getting married aren’t really policymakers. It’s a young girl’s wedding. We just decided to give them a nice, peaceful message.”
Not everyone was so generous. Just before 6 p.m., six protesters including a child about 5 or 6 years old, all from the aggressively anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., made good on their threat to protest in Crawford an hour or so before the wedding.
They gathered on the road leading to the ranch, waving signs that read “God is your enemy, America is doomed,” “Pro-gay Bush” and “Not blessed, just cursed,” and sang fractured versions of songs religious and patriotic, including the Marine theme, “From the Halls of Montezuma.”
Rachel Hockenbarger, 42, one of the Westboro Baptist Church protesters, at one point quoted a Bible verse about “odious women,” then blasted President Bush for raising Jenna to be tolerant of gay people.
But others also got their say in. Thomas Miller, 18, a self-described “counterprotester” from Waco’s Lake Shore Baptist Church, stood across the street with his own sign: “For God so loved the world.”
And a number of neighborhood children hastily put together a tongue-in-cheek sign lampooning the Kansas protesters: “These people are gay.”
Most folks visiting Crawford, however, had no political agenda, just a wish to somehow mix a bit with history. Among them: Jency Allison and McKay Sharp, who finished their finals at Baylor University in nearby Waco, then drove out to Crawford.
The two seniors, one in shorts, the other in a sundress, giggled at the Jenna and Henry ornaments, mouse pads and keychains for sale at a shop on the main drag. They took photos with their digital camera in front of the lifesize President Bush cardboard cutout.
They admitted they were starstruck to be so close to something so historic.
“He came to Baylor four years ago, and we followed him around all day,” Allison, a senior in sports management, said of the president. “It was like friendly stalking. We love the family. And we just think President Bush is the cutest thing in the world.”
equinn@wacotrib.com
757-5748
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