In My Time - Dick Cheney [274]
There were lots of goodbyes over the following weeks, as we thanked so many people who had done so much for us and for the country over the last eight years. One group that worked largely in anonymity was the White House Medical Unit. For eight years, Dr. Lewis Hofmann had been by my side. He’d spent countless hours in hold rooms, on airplanes, and in vans. He’d spent so much time in the back end of a fishing boat that he’d taken up fly-fishing with a passion. My family and I will always be grateful to Lew for his friendship and for all he did for us. The president and I gathered the group together in the Rose Garden for one last goodbye after the election. The president put it this way: “You all have been just great. Miracle workers, actually. When I picked the vice president I never expected him to survive, but you pulled him through.” While I’d had more optimism about my outlook, I couldn’t argue with his gratitude for the docs.
JANUARY 20, 2009, DAWNED cold and sunny. We joined the Bidens, Bushes, and Obamas at the White House for the traditional pre-inaugural coffee. I was in a wheelchair, having strained my back moving boxes over the weekend, and as my successor, Joe Biden, and I greeted each other that morning, I warned him, “Joe, this is how you’re liable to look when your term is up.”
With President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden on Inaugural morning, 2009 in the Blue Room at the White House. I had strained my back moving boxes into our new house. “Joe,” I told Biden, “this is what you’re going to look like when your term is up.” (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
Then we made the drive up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, and I took my seat on the inaugural platform. As I looked out over the massive crowds gathered that morning, I thought back to my first days in Washington in 1968. I had arrived a few months after a section of the city had been in flames, engulfed in the race riots that followed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s murder. Now, here we were, united as Americans, inaugurating our first African-American president. Barack Obama had not been my candidate, and I would disagree deeply with many of the decisions he would make as president, but I, like most Americans, felt tremendous pride that morning at the historic nature of this moment.
I could never have imagined when I first came to Washington that I would be leaving as vice president so many years later. I thought about all I had seen and been a part of during a span of time when Americans had seen great change and sadness, joy and triumph. And yet for all the life that filled those forty years, they seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye.
The path I had traveled was partly due to the circumstances of my birth. Not that I had been born into a powerful or privileged family; I wasn’t. But I was born an American, a blessing surely among life’s greatest. I had parents who loved me and taught me the importance of sacrifice and hard work. I was privileged to have chances—and second chances—of the kind that may be possible only in our great nation. On that inaugural morning, as the wheel turned and it was time for us to go, I thought finally of my grandchildren.
With my namesake, grandson Richard, on board Air Force II, summer 2007 (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)
I cannot begin to imagine all the opportunities they will have and the ways in which their lives will unfold. They, too, have the blessings of love and the opportunities and freedoms only America can provide, and they have a grandfather who will be watching with great interest.
EPILOGUE
On the afternoon of January 20, 2009, as the president was getting ready to depart for Texas, I introduced him to supporters who had gathered at Andrews Air Force Base by saying that my eight years of service with him had been a special honor. He had made it possible for me to participate