PRESIDENT SURPRISES BURKE ON COURSE
The Burke/Barack sidebar . . .
He’s got game . . . “Keep your head down . . . and swing easy.”
Thus was the caddyshack cajoling advise given to President Obama by Ald. Ed Burke during a surprise encounter with POTUS at the Beverly Country Club Sunday.
While helicopters hovered, cellphones clicked, heads bobbed, and the Secret Service zipped around in golf carts, President Obama made a brief detour to have a sidebar with an old friend: Ald. Ed Burke.
It was Father’s Day and President Obama had penciled in a golf game at the Beverly Country Club with his best buddies, Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt after his family left town early Sunday morning for a trip to Oregon.
“I was totally surprised,” said Burke, who was also golfing at the prestigious South Side club with Judge Terry Lavin.
“I was waiting at the first hole while he [the president] was finishing up at the ninth hole, when he graciously came over and inquired about Anne [Burke’s wife, Illinois
Caddies thrilled to meet president | Page 13 Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke] and Travis [the Burkes’ African-American son.]”
“We chatted about family, and the president seemed happy and relaxed and said, “‘ Everything is beautiful in Chicago,’ ” said Burke.
The golf trip, planned weeks ago and almost held at Olympia Fields Country Club, capped a weekend of wedding festivities in the first family’s Kenwood neighborhood — where Laura Jarrett, daughter of Obama’s top inner sanctum adviser Valerie Jarrett, was married Saturday night.
“It was a beautiful wedding night under a tent in Valerie’s [Jarrett’s] backyard, but it was hot even though there were fans,” said a source who was at the wedding.
“There was a deejay, not an orchestra, and everyone was dancing. Even the President. (The music was described as “happening. Al Green. Beyonce. A real mix.”)
Did President Obama warble a la Al Green? “Well, if he did, he didn’t do it at a microphone for everyone to hear,” said a source.
“It was a very warm evening, but fun and relaxing. There were food stations. All American type, downhome food. The president was very relaxed. He danced. Everyone was bopping . . . having fun. Chatting. The president was still there after midnight when a lot of people left.
“It was really a family wedding, although U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former Netherlands Ambassador Faye [Hartog] Levin and Vernon and Ann Jordan were there.” Ann Jordan is a cousin of Jarrett.
The wedding ceremony, performed by Cook County Judge Neil Cohen, who is married to first lady Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff Susan Sher, “was very brief,” the source added.
And one final, lovely high five to women.
The “gorgeous” bride, who married fellow attorney Tony Balkissoon, was walked down the aisle and “given away” by both her mother and her grandmother, Valerie’s mother, Dr. Barbara Bowman, whose husband, Dr. James Bowman, died last year.
How very special.