MSUM NURSING STUDENT WHO ATTENDED OBAMA INAUGURATION FEATURED IN VA MAGAZINE
A Minneapolis Veterans Administration registered nurse Anne Stoefen (who’s now finishing her RN to BSN degree at MSUM) was one of 41 people from across the country invited to spend the inaugural weekend in Washington as personal guests of the Obama family.
Like many fellow travelers, she wore a button that proclaimed, “I was there!” Her button should have read, “I was really, really there!”
Stoefen, her father and three sisters rode the inauguration train to Washington, D.C., with the Obamas, observed the swearing-in from a VIP area, and danced alongside the Obamas at their first inaugural ball.
“Unbelievable,” said Stoefen as she recalled the trip.
As historic as the event was, it had even deeper personal meaning for her, mingling, as she put it, “excitement with sadness.” Stoefen’s mother, Beth Wehrman, also an R.N., was one of President Obama’s earliest supporters. She had met him years before while working with HIV patients at a nonprofit needle exchange program she founded in Illinois. She died of pancreatic cancer last October, but campaigned for the president- to-be through the fatigue and nausea of her illness.
“She really believed in him and wanted to see him become president,” Stoefen said.
The Obamas kept in touch with Wehrman during her illness. She died hours after casting an absentee ballot for him. She didn’t make the inauguration, but President Obama made sure her family did. Both families shared memories and tears on the train ride to Washington. (Courtesy of Vanguard, published by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.)