U.S. President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Malia and Sasha disembark from Air Force One at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, on June 15, 2012. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GettyImages)
Reporting Dorothy Tucker
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CHICAGO (CBS) – President Obama and his family are spending the Father’s Day weekend in Chicago to attend the wedding of a presidential adviser’s daughter.
Laura Jarrett, daughter of top White House aide Valerie Jarrett, is getting married on Saturday at the Kenwood home of her grandparents. Kenwood is where President Obama’s home – now rarely used – is also located.
The president arrived in Chicago Friday evening with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters Malia and Sasha. After Mr. Obama’s motorcade arrived in Kenwood, residents there said they saw the president walking with his security detail. A pool reporter covering the president’s visit said Mr. Obama was visiting friends.
The Obamas are expected to remain in town until Sunday, when the president is scheduled to depart for Mexico.
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This weekend, people are expected to hang around the well-guarded neighborhood near the corner of 49th and Greenwood in hopes of glimpsing the First Family, CBS 2′s Dorothy Tucker reports.
Lionel Sproulls was preparing pizza at Italian Fiesta in Hyde Park. It’s not unthinkable he’ll get the call to make the president’s favorite pie.
In fact, the last order from the leader of the United States last month during the Chicago NATO summit.
It’s been a while since the owners of Valois got a call to deliver what’s listed as Obama’s favorite breakfast. But patrons order them all the time.
“I really like it, but I really like the fact that it is Obama’s favorite,” Valois patron Julie Patron says.
Signs linking the Obamas to Hyde Park are sprinkled across the neighborhood. At Medici, they used to sell T-shirts touting that Obama ate here, but now they’re planning a new slogan: “Where’s Obama?”
“We haven’t seen him in a while. We’d like him to come back, have some pizza,” manager Kristen Esterly says.
They’ve got proof the restaurant was a family favorite. Upstairs, there was once a table where daughter Malia Obama wrote her name in crayon.
“We put up a frame a few years back so nobody else would write on top it,” Esterly says.
Tom Flynn used to see the girls and their mother Michelle quite a bit at the 57th Street Book Store. Their favorite room was the children’s corner.
“It’s definitely something of an honor,” Flynn says.
Since taking office in 2009, Obama has made relatively few trips to Chicago’s South Side, where he was a state senator before running for the U.S. Senate. During the NATO summit in May, Obama stayed at a downtown hotel, but he spent the night at his Chicago home early this month when he attended a trio of fund-raisers in town.
It’s the first time in two years the entire Obama family has been together in Chicago.
