When Norma Sanders first learned she had been chosen as an alternate delegate representing Mississippi at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland she was naturally excited.
It was, after all, her first GOP national convention.
But in the days leading up to the event, she began to have second thoughts. The shooting deaths of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, led some to fear the convention would create a volatile atmosphere when the Republicans gathered to officially nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.
“Absolutely, I was scared,” Sanders said. “I told (husband) Harry, ‘Hey, if you don’t want to go, that’s fine with me.’ That was just me being scared, though.”
Norma, who teaches business at Caledonia High School, and Harry, the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors president, put those fears aside, making the journey by car last weekend. Friday morning, they left Cleveland to visit family in West Virginia before returning home.
“When we got there that first day, we walked around and we realized everything was fine,” she said. “There really weren’t any big protests, just a few people here and there, doing their thing. It was like that the whole week.”
Her first national convention was not as she imagined it in other ways, too.
“There was just a lot more energy than I thought there would be,” she said. “It was a lot more exciting, almost like a four-day pep rally.”
She said the mornings were devoted to meeting with her fellow Mississippi delegates.
“Mostly eating,” she laughed. “Then we had the afternoon to do whatever, and we enjoyed walking around Cleveland. It’s really beautiful, and the people were just fantastic — waiters, convention workers, staff, just everybody. You could tell they were all really happy to have us in their city.
“Our hotel was a corner room, and we had two big windows that looked out over Lake Erie,” Sanders added. “It was just beautiful. I’d never been to Cleveland before. I was very impressed.”
She said she and Harry usually arrived at “The Q” (Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention was held) about 4-5 p.m. and got back to their hotel around 11 p.m.
“You think, ‘Am I going to be able to stand listening to speeches for five or six hours?’ But, really, it was great. There was just a lot of energy and excitement. People moved around, so we got to meet people from all over. It was just a lot of fun.”
She said she also had something of a brush with fame, too.
“While we were eating lunch Tuesday, a reporter from the Washington Post came up and asked me some questions,” she said. “We sort of forgot about it the next day and didn’t get a paper. So I googled my name and Washington Post, and I was in there.”
Her name made it. Her words didn’t.
“When I read the story, I realized I didn’t say what was in the paper,” she said. She assumes the reporter got her name and quotes mixed up with one of the other delegates she had been interviewing.
No worries.
“Hey, it’s not every day you get misquoted by the Washington Post,” she said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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