President Obama Has A South Sider By His Side
CHICAGO (CBS) -- When President Obama made his way around the Capitol on Monday both before and after his inauguration, a fellow South Sider was escorting him.
Obama Has South Sider By His Side
U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terry Gainer started as a Chicago police officer in 1968, eventually was director of the Illinois State Police Department, the No.2 person in the Washington, D.C. police department and was Chief of the Capitol Police before being appointed to his current position.
You'd know Gainer by his trademark mustache.
He was with President Obama throughout Obama's time in the Capitol, most visibly while escorting the president to and from the inaugural platform.
After Gainer's security duties end for the day, he says he'll host a nice dinner for about 70 people tonight in the Mansfield Room of the Capitol and "celebrate in a quiet way." He says many of those on the guest list are friends and relatives from Chicago.
Gainer says security plans for the Inauguration have been in the works for about seven months.
Of making it to where he was today, Gainer, originally from the Beverly neighborhood on the Southwest Side, tells Newsradio, "I gotta tell you. From a kid from the South Side of Chicago, son of a milk man, who would have thunk it?"
As far as seeing a fellow South Sider be re-inaugurated president, Gainer joked, "That's right. South Side runs it. Everybody else runs from it, they used to say."
