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Tom Kopko had been doing laundry that November night at the house his parents have in South Bend, a mindless activity for the Notre Dame basketball walk-on considering the developing history on the television in the background.
While Kopko and his teammate, fellow Chicago native Jonathan Peoples, washed and folded clothes Nov. 4, they heard the election results. President-elect Barack Obama of Chicago’s Hyde Park, the Illinois senator and Democratic nominee for president, had won. And he was about to give his acceptance speech.
As Kopko and Peoples, both guards, watched the speech, reality struck Kopko.
“I was sitting with J.P. and in the middle of the speech, he just goes ‘You know, he’s your neighbor, yo,’ ” Kopko said. “I was just like ‘Yeah, that’s kind of crazy.’ I realized it throughout the election, but that was kind of like when I was thinking about it the most.”
Kopko grew up less than a square block from Obama and would see Obama at the University of Chicago gymnasium playing pickup basketball games.
Kopko never met Obama but heard him speak relatively early in his political career when Obama was an Illinois state senator and spoke to a youth basketball league Kopko played in.
Kopko’s mother, Mary Beth, remembers coming away unimpressed at the time.
“He was very methodical in his speech,” she said. “Very calm, but the kids weren’t excited about it.”
Her opinion changed four years later when she saw Obama give his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Obama had gone from someone whom she described as a protégé of late Democratic senator Paul Simon – “honest and thorough, but not exciting” – to an engaging orator.
It was then that Kopko realized his neighbor may one day become a presidential candidate. Even going into the 2008 primaries, though, he thought it might be a little bit soon.
That is, until Obama won Iowa and Secret Service agents began showing up in the neighborhood.
“His security got stepped up pretty big,” Kopko said. “They had Secret Service guys around, and you could tell if he was there, if his wife was there, or just his kids.
“If it was his kids, it would be just one SUV in his driveway and one guy standing outside or something. If Mrs. Obama was there, then it would be a few people standing outside and someone on the corner.
“If he was there, it would be multiple SUVs and people on all the corners. There was actually one in front of our house whenever he was there. It was kind of crazy.”
Through traffic on Obama’s street had been closed off, and the Kopkos live close enough to be within the security checkpoint barrier. When going home, the Kopkos would be stopped and asked to show identification. If friends were coming by, their names had to be on a list.
But it was worth all that hassle to see Hyde Park on Election Night. Mary Beth Kopko said their church, St. Thomas the Apostle on Kimbark Avenue, hooked a computer up to a large-screen television outside to show results.
Today, the Kopkos’ neighbor becomes the 44th president of the United States. Kopko said if he can’t watch the swearing-in live, he’ll make sure to tape it so he can see it later today.
“I never thought he would really win it, and he goes out and wins it,” Kopko said. “It was kind of a little surreal, but it’s kind of cool, too.”
