COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former President Barack Obama, marking the retirement of the woman credited with popularizing the chant “Fired up, ready to go!
Former President Barack Obama, marking the retirement of the woman credited with popularizing the chant “Fired up, ready to go!” that epitomized his campaigns, says her energy played a key role in lifting his spirits and his candidacy.
“It was early in my campaign, and I wasn’t doing that good,” Obama recalled in a video provided to The Associated Press by the Obama Foundation, harking back to a 2007 campaign stop in Greenwood, South Carolina, on a dreary, rainy day.
But the small crowd, Obama said, was transformed as Edith Childs led them in the rousing, back-and-forth chant, “Fired up, ready to go!”
“Leadership and power and inspiration can come from anywhere,” Obama said in the video to mark Childs’ retirement after 24 years on the Greenwood County Council. “It just has to do with spirit, and nobody embodied that better than Edith.
