Everyday movers, shakers

Among the tenets Americans hold dear is that anyone can grow up to become . . . famous. You thought we were going to say “president,” didn’t you? Don’t be ridiculous.

Joe the Plumber, who went from small-town obscurity to overnight fame after his sidewalk encounter with Barack Obama became a centerpiece of John McCain’s campaign rhetoric, has acquired an agent to manage his career as national celebrity.

There were other everyday Americans whose serendipitous interactions with the presidential candidates also made waves. Some abruptly changed the narrative by asking the unexpected question or provoking the unexpected comment. Others gave the candidate a story to tell Americans along the campaign trail. No one took off quite like Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher, Ohio’s most famous nonlicensed plumber. But here, we celebrate them nonetheless.

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Edith Childs is happy but worn out.

In the last three weeks, she has helped register more than 900 Democrats in Greenwood County, S.C., where 23,218 people cast ballots in the 2004 election -- 62% of them for President Bush.

“Greenwood has normally been a Republican town,” Childs said. “But, honey, we [are] turning so blue. I feel blue all in the air.”

Childs, 60, became an inadvertent star of Barack Obama’s stump speeches last year after he adopted her locally famous chant: “Fired up? Ready to go!”

They met in June 2007, when the Democrat paid a visit to her rural town to secure the presidential endorsement of a state legislator who promised it on one condition: Obama would have to visit Greenwood. There he encountered Childs, a community activist known for her chant -- and her big hats.

Obama said he was startled when, out of the blue, Childs began the chant. But pretty soon he joined in and, by the time he left Greenwood, he was in a good mood for the rest of the day. That, Obama would later say, was proof that one determined person can make a difference.

Childs has seen Obama three times since, including at a rally with Oprah Winfrey in December, where the talk show diva bowed to her. “I felt like the queen that I am,” Childs said.

But her most memorable moment, she said, was in August when, as an alternate Democratic convention delegate, she heard Obama accept his party’s nomination in Denver.

“To have just been there was an awesome experience,” she said. “I just cried. I could not help it.”

Childs said she did not plan to wake up Wednesday morning and rejoice if the first African American president had been elected. “No ma’am,” she said. “I am not going to bed, so I am not going to wake up. I am already going to be up.”

-- Robin Abcarian