President talks business; protesters talk peace

The protesters who awaited him at two stops were focused on getting out of Iraq.

Bush arrived in the city on Air Force One at about 10:30 a.m. and after honoring an Iraq war veteran went directly to Nashville Bun Co.

‘Oh my gosh, he was so warm and so gracious to our employees,’ Nashville Bun Co. CEO Cordia Harrington said. ‘It was just crazy.’

Harrington said she was so caught up with giving the president a tour of the bakery that she forgot to get Bush’s autograph or offer him a bun.

Workers at the business had spent several days sprucing up and preparing for Bush’s visit, and Harrington gave them due credit for the company’s success.

Harrington said her company is ‘the U.N. of the baking industry,’ with women and minorities making up about 80 percent of the company’s work force.

She said the president asked Harrington and her family to ride with him in the motorcade to the hotel. Harrington said her 21-year-old son Tyler Wilkinson asked the president for advice.

She said the president told Wilkinson, ‘Hold true to your core values and do the right thing even when that’s not the popular thing to do.’

Vanderbilt math professor Eric Schechter, 57, who was one of about 15 Bush protesters gathered outside the bun bakery said the president was using an easy opportunity to be seen with a diverse group of workers.

‘He went to the bun company because it was a hand-picked photo op. He went there because there are minorities and women working there. He was pretending to be supportive of small business,’ Schechter said, holding a sign that read ‘Professors for Peace.’

There were about 25 protesters at the bakery and at the Gaylord Opryland hotel where Bush delivered remarks to a town hall meeting. That’s fewer than the numbers who have turned out to protest at earlier Nashville appearances.

A lone pro-Bush demonstrator waved an American flag and held a yellow ribbon-shaped magnet with the words ‘Support our Troops’ while standing on the opposite side of the street from other protesters.

‘Those are some real left-wing loonies,’ Tirdad Gharib, 47, said, pointing to members of the Nashville Peace and Justice Center who were holding signs. ‘People don’t understand it. President Bush saved a lot of disaster (from happening).’