Hannah shows Obama the audacity of hope
But it was all in a week’s work for a shy teenage girl who captured the public imagination with her speech welcoming the US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to her hometown.
“Good morning. My name is Hannah Nelson, I’m 16 years old, and I’m from Belfast,” she told 2,000 invited guests at the city’s landmark Waterfront Hall. “I’ve been thinking about an important question. How do you make peace permanent in Northern Ireland?”
Hannah sat down to write her essay last Saturday, in a break from studying. She entered it the next day in a competition run by the US consulate in Northern Ireland.
On Wednesday, American officials telephoned her home in Knockbreda, a suburb of south Belfast, to tell her she had won. The prize? Opening the show for the Obamas’ visit. The next day she finished her GCSE exams.
By Friday, she was rehearsing for an address from the US president’s own podium. “I’m a shy girl, who has never done this kind of thing before.”
Her message of reconciliation, the future, and peace — echoing Obama’s own trademark themes of hope and change — wowed the audience and international media which clambered to speak with her afterwards.
“I just realised everyone is the same as me, peace is something we need to achieve in Northern Ireland. It is achievable and I just want to live in a society where we are safe and can be friends with everybody and there are no divisions... That’s what I want so I decided I would try to write something about that.”
Backstage the president and the first lady settled Hannah’s nerves with a handshake and a hug, small talk about holidays and reassurances about how much they liked her speech.
The renowned Obama warmth clearly worked.
When she took to the stage, dressed in the dark navy colours of her grammar school, and flanked by hundreds of schoolchildren, she delivered a polished performance.
Her family too — father Jim, mother Frances, sister Sophie, 15, and brother Matthew, 14 — were clearly caught in the glare of the limelight.
Frances, a teacher who prompted Hannah about the competition, struggled to catch her breath as she took it all in.
“I just wanted to cry my eyes out,” she said. “Out of a sense of pride and because of the journey she has been on. She is actually quite a quiet child, who doesn’t do public speaking.”
Matthew said to their father: “Dad, Hannah’s trending on Twitter. She’s No 2 in the UK.”
Grandfather Carol Jackson, who came to Northern Ireland from Somerset in 1972, said he was in disbelief. “I am very proud, that was totally incredible,” he said.
“That sort of thing just doesn’t happen — but it did. It was her own speech. I didn’t help her, her parents didn’t help her — I think they are as surprised as I am.”
Everyone wanted to know if she would like to be a political leader herself in the future.
“I don’t know about that,” said Jim. “She’s probably too honest.”
For now she is looking forward to flying to Portugal tomorrow with her grandmother Pamela Jackson. It was meant as a treat for finishing her exams. But it will be spent getting over the day she showed Obama and the world the audacity of hope.
