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Study-abroad students encounter ex-president
Reinfeld and the other UD study-abroad students had just spent a day at Zurich financial institutions, where they were told that celebrities frequent Zurich because the Swiss have a laissez-faire attitude toward them. “They told us no one cares about celebrities here, so celebrities can walk up and down the streets and go anywhere, and no one will bother them,’’ Reinfeld, a junior finance major from New Jersey, said. With that in mind, Reinfeld couldn’t help wondering why American agents would be clumped around a nondescript Zurich storefront. “I said we should find out who’s in there because we’re not from Switzerland, and we can harass anybody. So I looked in and said, ‘That’s President Clinton in there.’” Reinfeld thought the students would be as excited as he was, but they were disbelieving. He remembered their exact words: “They said, ‘You’re nuts!’” “I remember fighting with them. I said, ‘I know what my presidents look like.’ And, they all just kind of laughed at me. While we were arguing, he walked out, and we didn’t notice.” After Clinton went missing, Reinfeld rushed into the shop and asked the proprietor who was just there. She confirmed it was Clinton. Reinfeld and a friend started to make a beeline for Clinton’s back, but they thought better of it. “We started running, and we thought we were going to cut him off, but we didn’t want to be running up right behind the president. He had a about 10 Secret Service agents around him.” Instead, they retreated to a nearby bridge to snap some presidential pictures. When Clinton headed for the Starbucks adjacent to the students’ hotel, Reinfeld ran into the hotel and herded students and Burton A. Abrams, professor of economics. He didn’t want to bug a former president while he was drinking his coffee, so Reinfeld waited until Clinton exited. Then, he approached the former president, talking extremely quickly so he wouldn’t take too much of Clinton’s time. “He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Slow down. What’s your name? Where you from? He made a little small talk,’” Reinfeld said. Clinton not only posed for pictures, Reinfeld said, he called Abrams in to stand next to him, put his arm around Reinfeld, and began instructing the short people to get in the front and the tall people to move to the back. “There’s a feeling that you get when you meet the president of the United States,’’ Reinfeld said. “You just kind of get this feeling that this man was the most powerful man in the world for eight years. It’s just kind of awesome. There’s so much stuff in his head that no one will ever know because he’s not allowed to tell it. It was just so cool.’’ Reinfeld’s brushes with fame didn’t stop there. He also saw the late Pope John Paul II on the trip, albeit from afar. And, earlier this month, Reinfeld met Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet at a Coca-Cola Co. shareholders meeting in Wilmington. “Since I had these two encounters, I thought I might write letters to CEOs and former political figures and try to get a little insight into what made them that way and, hopefully, how I can do it,’’ he said. He already has begun a letter to former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca. Article by Kathy Canavan To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
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