President Obama reconnects with Jacob Philadelphia

[Music] hello is that jacob yep it is it's barack obama man do you remember me yeah i remember you telling me that uh your hair was gonna be gray next time and i was not lying this gentleman here mr philadelphia was a marine who had served with the national security council so he comes and he brings his two little boys his wife this young man the older brother he's very serious and he's asking me questions about you know weapon systems and you know the budget process and clearly he's been studying this young man jacob he has a different kind of question he's kind of standing there looking at me for a second and then he says is your hair like mine i go well um you want to check and see then i leaned down and i said go ahead touch it and right as he was putting his hand on top of my head pete souza my white house photographer took the picture i said what do you think he says yeah i think that's pretty much what i got [Music] i think this picture embodied one of the hopes that i'd had when i first started running for office i remember telling michelle and some of my staff you know i think that if i were to win the day i was sworn in to office young people particularly african american people people of color outsiders folks who maybe didn't always feel like they belonged they'd look at themselves differently to see a person who looked like them in the oval office who would speak to black kids and latino kids gay kids and younger girls now they could see the world open up for them i was five years old when i met president obama in the oval office when i was younger i just thought the president was just my dad's boss i didn't know how powerful he was but i was slightly intimidated it was a really big room the oval office so i was a little shy and i kind of remember touching his hair and him towering over me that was a pretty big highlight of my life it is very wonderful to see representation in the government because if i get to see another black man be at the top be at that pinnacle then i want to follow that lead well listen i want to catch up with you because we found out that you were going to be graduating this month and i thought how can it be that that little boy that i was talking to in the oval office now is suddenly about to graduate from high school tell me what you've been doing it it seems as if you've been traveling around a lot and you ended up going to high school in uganda yes my dad joined the state department right right so so he got a bunch of various posts and sometimes that's hard moving from place to place how's the experience been traveling it's kind of difficult but at the end of the day we get to see a lot of things that a lot of other kids don't get the chance to you get to talk to people see their ideals for how they want to change the world and how we want to do it our own way that's great in this world that that can only uh benefit you my understanding is you're going to be going to university of memphis huh yeah that's the plan do you know what you want to study yeah i'm doing political sciences [Music] i i think the white house visit clearly uh inspired you i hope yes it really is that's fantastic so the thing i'm confused about is how did you get to be this big man is that like a kind of a mustache some facial hair you got there yeah i'm growing it oh lord it sounds like you're doing great man and i'm so proud of you congratulations on your graduation great talk to you tell your family that i said hi all right all right congratulations thank you bye [Music] you

Channel: Obama Foundation

Views: 213,258

Keywords:

Id: 0BInAW_Gx1Y

Length: 4min 38sec (278 seconds)

Published: Fri May 27 2022