Wilton Student Gets to Witness Presidential Turkey Pardoning
TURKEY
Norwalk Hour
Katerina Voutsina
Boston University Washington News Service
11/25/09
WASHINGTON – “Guess where I am going for Thanksgiving,” 10-year-old Riley Ann Wadehra of Wilton asked her classmates at Middlebrook School early Tuesday afternoon.
Riley’s plans included her grandparents but not their house. On Wednesday morning Riley was at the White House as one of 60 guests attending President Barack Obama’s first presidential turkey pardoning.
The event was better than expected, she said. “It was very relaxed. We were just five steps away from the President and it did not feel like we were so close to a president,” she said. “It was so casual.”
Wearing a purple dress, which she “picked for the occasion,” Riley entered the White House’s Southwest gate followed by her grandparents, Barbara and Tony Erena, and her uncle, Blake Thompson, all of High Falls, N.Y. They were guests of Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation.
The federation was responsible for delivering Courage, a 45-pound turkey from North Carolina, to the White House for the annual pardoning ceremony, which was first done by President George H.W. Bush.
Riley and her family waited for 20 minutes in the Main Foyer of the White House listening to live piano music and then joined the president and his daughters Sasha and Malia and the media under the North Portico for the ceremony.
“I’m told Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson actually ate their turkeys,” Obama said in his speech joking. “You can’t fault them for that; that’s a good-looking bird. Thanks to the interventions of Malia and Sasha – because I was planning to eat this sucker – Courage will also be spared this terrible and delicious fate.”
Immediately after the event, Riley said she got a chance to pat the turkey and take some pictures.
“Courage was very calm,” she said with a laugh.
Just in case Courage could not fulfill his duties, Walter Pelletier, the chairman of the National Turkey Federation, also brought Carolina as an alternate.
After the White House ceremony the birds were to fly first class to California where Courage will be grand marshal of the Disney Thanksgiving Day Parade. The turkeys will get to live out their days at Disneyland.
Riley, who kept asking her grandparents questions about the ceremony and the White House, said she “learned a lot today.”
After leaving the White House, Riley was anxious to call her mother, Jenn Wadehra, and have lunch and go sight-seeing with her grandparents.
“She was so excited that they got into the White House,” said Mrs. Wadehra in a phone interview.
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