Knox College
Galesburg, Illinois
12:13 P.M. CDT
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Galesburg! (Applause.) Well, it’s good to be home in Illinois! (Applause.) It is good to be back. It’s good to be back. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. (Applause.) Thank you. Everybody, have a seat, have a seat. Well, it is good to be back.
I want to, first of all, thank Knox College — (applause) — I want to thank Knox College and your president, Teresa Amott, for having me here today. Give Teresa a big round of applause. (Applause.) I want to thank your Congresswoman, Cheri Bustos, who’s here. (Applause.) We've got Governor Quinn here. (Applause.) I'm told we've got your Lieutenant Governor, Sheila Simon, is here. (Applause.) There she is. Attorney General Lisa Madigan is here. (Applause.)
I see a bunch of my former colleagues, some folks who I haven't seen in years and I'm looking forward to saying hi to. One in particular I've got to mention, one of my favorites from the Illinois Senate — John Sullivan is in the house. (Applause.) John was one of my earliest supporters when I was running for the U.S. Senate, and it came in really handy because he’s got, like, 10 brothers and sisters, and his wife has got 10 brothers and sisters — (laughter) — so they’ve got this entire precinct just in their family. (Laughter.) And they all look like John — the brothers do — so he doesn’t have to go to every event. He can just send one of his brothers out. (Laughter.) It is good to see him.
Dick Durbin couldn’t make it today, but he sends his best. And we love Dick. (Applause.) He’s doing a great job. And we’ve got one of my favorite neighbors, the Senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill, in the house, because we’re going to Missouri later this afternoon. (Applause.)
And all of you are here, and it’s great to see you. (Applause.) And I hope everybody is having a wonderful summer. The weather is perfect. Whoever was in charge of that, good job. (Laughter.)
So, eight years ago, I came here to deliver the commencement address for the class of 2005. Things were a little different back then. For example, I had no gray hair — (laughter) — or a motorcade. Didn’t even have a prompter. In fact, there was a problem in terms of printing out the speech because the printer didn’t work here and we had to drive it in from somewhere. (Laughter.) But it was my first big speech as your newest senator.
And on the way here I was telling Cheri and …read more
