By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Sharon Belkofer, of Perrysburg Township, addressed the Democratic National Convention Wedmesday night, she didn’t feel alone.
She could feel the presence of her son, Tom. A lieutenant colonel in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, he died in Afghanistan in May, 2010, when a convoy he was in was attacked. His parents hadn’t even realized he was in Afghanistan.
“I could see him smiling with his dimples,” Belkofer said, “and saying: ‘Go get ’em mom.’”
And since his death, he and the president she met as a result of the tragedy have spurred her into action.
Sharon Belkofer
Belkofer, a retired nurse whose two other sons also served in the military, gave a short introduction to a biographical video that introduced President Obama’s speech at the convention.
In it she spoke of her encounters with Obama. The first was after her son’s death. At an event at Fort Drum in upstate New York where Tom Belkofer was based, the president asked to greet the Gold Star families. When he gave Belkofer a hug she told the convention audience, “I cried all over his suit. Tom would have been so embarrassed.”
After that time, she got to meet the president twice more. Two more hugs. She attended his inauguration.
“So warm and kind. So compassionate,” she said. “I was so inspired. Maybe this old lady could still make a difference. I knew my community’s schools needed more resources, so at age of 73 I took a leap of faith and ran for my local school board.”
When going door-to-door in cold and dreary weather got tough, she told the convention, “I thought of my son Tom who never gave up and I thought of our President who never gives up. Why should I be any different?”
She won the election last fall and received a handwritten note of congratulations from the president.
“I don’t think any of this would happen since his death if it wasn’t for losing him,” she said of her son Tom in an interview on Thursday. “I think of these as gifts from him, though I had to lose him to get them.”
Wednesday night’s speech was the latest of these gifts.
Belkofer said she received the call Friday morning from a presidential aide whom she’s met through her encounters with Obama and with whom she has stayed in contact. He wanted a favor: Would she speak to the convention?
In the discussions about who would introduce the biographical video, the aide brought up her name as the perfect person for the job.
She supplied them with copies of talks she’d given, and emails from when she was campaigning for school board.
The communications staff trimmed those to the four minutes needed. She flew to Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Support Local Media!Meanwhile her husband, Don had left on a fishing trip in northern Canada early Friday morning. Belkofer couldn’t even reach him until Monday to give him the news. He was lucky enough to find a television to get CNN, so he was able to watch his wife’s triumphant turn on the national stage.
“I was excited more so than nervous,” she said, and inspired by the president. She credited an all-star lineup of speakers before her – Vice President Joe Biden, vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg – with getting the audience “pumped up so it was easy for me to keep them going.”
“The energy in the room was phenomenal,” she said.
Belkofer feels strongly about the need to elect Hillary Clinton as president.
“The alternative is totally unacceptable and dangerous in my opinion,” she said. “We can’t go down that path. To undo the harm that might come would slow us down. We have to keep going forward. We have things to take care up of.”
Most immediately one of those things to take care of is the passage in November of a bond issue to improve the Rossford School District’s facilities. “That will be my main emphasis,” Belkofer said. “That’s the next challenge.”
