Students at Southside Elementary School received a special surprise Friday from an unexpected visitor, Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence, a Columbus native, visited the elementary school Friday around 1 p.m. He told the more than 900 students that he had received letters from fourth-grade teacher Mark Yeaton’s students inviting him to stop by the school the next time he visited Columbus.
The vice president arrived in Indianapolis Thursday for an event promoting the benefits of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, also known as USMCA.
Yeaton’s former third-grade students wrote congratulatory letters to Pence in 2016 after he had been named vice president. In the letters, the students asked Pence to visit their elementary school the next time he stopped in Columbus.
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Pence responded to the letters, reassuring the students that he would visit at a future date.
“I told my kids realistically this might not happen for years; he’s a really busy guy,” Yeaton said. “So, when I got a call Tuesday that this was going to happen, his people came over, walked through the building and asked a lot of questions.”
By Thursday, the plans were final: Pence would be making a surprise stop at the elementary school. Yeaton and Southside principal Jeff Backmeyer kept the visit a secret per a request from Secret Service. Teachers received an announcement Friday to gather in the school’s commons area for a special presentation.
“It’s more exciting than anything for the students to have the opportunity to see the vice president of the United States who grew up here in Columbus and then was governor of Indiana,” Backmeyer said. “The ability to have 900 students be able to tell that story someday, whether that be today or when they’re 50, that’s worth so much.”
During his visit, which lasted less than 30 minutes in total, Pence signed a one-of-a-kind guitar owned by Yeaton. The guitar is designed in the shape of Indiana and is painted to look like the Indiana state flag. It was created by Indianapolis-based guitar maker Scott David Campbell.
The guitar has been signed by several Hoosier natives, including former NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, also from Columbus, former actress and singer Florence Henderson and former Indiana Gov. Dan Quayle.
Yeaton said he uses the guitar in his classroom where he teaches Indiana history.
Before departing, Pence also shared words of encouragement with the students who were dressed up as the career they wanted to work in when they grew up as part of College Go Week.
“I dreamed some day that I could represent my hometown in Washington D.C. and I studied hard and I prayed harder and I had the opportunity to do just that,” Pence said, sharing his journey to becoming a Congressman, then governor of Indiana. “In 2016, this small town boy from southern Indiana became vice president of the United States of America.”
He told the students that they could be anything they wanted if they dreamed it.
“That’s what makes America special that anybody can be anybody if you work hard, study hard, listen to your parents, stay away from the things that can destroy your lives,” Pence said. “Whatever your dream is, whether it’s to be a teacher, whether its to be a farmer, in politics, a rock ‘n’ roll star; if you dream it, you can be it because that’s what America’s all about.”
