Father will miss Obama inauguration, but ensures family will be there
INAUGURATION | Father can't make it, but ensures family does
Michael Frazier Jr. describes himself as so many other Americans -- living paycheck to paycheck.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
So the 36-year-old South Sider says he can't afford time off from his Museum of Science & Industry job to join his family on their "Road Trip to the White House."
His mother, Pamela Frazier of Marquette Park, is taking nine family members on the three-day bus trip to the Capitol.
Going are Michael's two sons, Michael III, 16, and Mylon, 13, who he believes need to witness the inauguration of a black president.
"I love my boys to death," says the father, struggling to keep them in an apartment in upwardly mobile Beverly with his wife of 15 years.
"I'm grateful they'll be there to witness history -- a president sworn in that looks like them. I never thought I'd see it," he says.
Neither did his younger brother, Marquis Wright, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant who took a week off to go to the inauguration. He's flying in Friday because most flights from Saturday are booked solid.
"I just have to go," says Marquis.
"I have to give honor and thanks to this black man for even allowing himself to run, against the odds. You know it wasn't supposed to be. But through Barack Obama, Martin Luther King's dream -- everything King fought for and believed in -- is coming true."
Marquis says he expects to feel the way he did during the 1995 Million Man March, which Pamela also made sure her sons participated in. He says, "It will be emotional."
His brother says Obama has given him hope.
While Marquis left college after 2½ years when hired by Southwest, Michael, a DuSable High grad, has worked blue-collar jobs the past 20 years -- a Bennigan's waiter, a Mitsubishi Motors plant worker, housekeeping at the Congress Hotel, a laborer at the Chicago Cubs warehouse.
Michael's goal at one time, however, had been to go into electrical engineering.
"I have to work hard to take care of my family. It's always a paycheck from being homeless," he says.
"When Obama won, I wanted to scream, shout, everything. It made me realize it's never too late. I want my sons to be able to do things that I couldn't, to not have to struggle so much," the father says.
"That's why I'm so glad they're going, so they can see and know, 'I can do anything.' And though I can't be there, a part of me will be, in them. I've told them I want to know everything that happens."
This is the second story in a series following the Frazier family from Chicago. Nine family members are making the trip to Washington, D.C., for Barack Obama's inauguration.