THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 21, 1995 TAG: 9510210271
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
Signing 2,012 books, flashing nearly as many smiles, piling up votes for a presidential race come mid-November, Colin Powell stayed 45 minutes overtime Friday at the post exchange across from the Norfolk Naval Base.
At 1:45 p.m. he set out, unfazed, for a grueling session at Prince Books on East Main Street.
``I don't cozy up to anybody,'' he said on arriving at the Naval Base. But a slight modifying of his views on some key issues this week seem designed to woo the Republican right wing. He is gearing up to run.
As an unending line wound around the huge post exchange and snaked past counters through its interior, few on the march for books seemed concerned with issues. They place faith in his character.
On a slight platform, he sat behind a large desk. On his left, two women opened books to the title page and passed them to him.
He scrawled his bold signature with his right hand, filling half the page. With his left hand he swept the book to a woman on his right who passed it over to each customer filing by.
Powell managed to look up, catch the customer's eye, smile, and say, ``How're you!''
``Thanks,'' they said.
``Run,'' they said.
Now and then the assembly line snarled. A kink occurred when Elizabeth Walker, a Virginia Beach sixth-grade teacher in blue denim, asked Powell to sign under an inscription she had penned on a blank page: Keep striving to make a difference in one child's life.
To efforts to move her along, she cried: ``My students are going to be very upset if I don't get this book signed!''
Reaching for the book, a smiling Powell said: ``This lady looks like she might break up the place!''
Behind her, a Navy wife, Karen Cormier of Portsmouth, pushed a shopping cart with Breanna, 7 months, asleep in the basket, and Mandalyn, 2 years, sitting wide-eyed in the cart.
Flash bulbs flickered around Powell's nearly crew-cut head.
Behind a rope, shoppers watched the panorama passing the desk. One tried in vain to photograph Powell from afar through the line.
Seeing the woman's frustration, Beth Baker, deputy public affairs officer, took the woman's camera and took Powell's picture, close up. Others among the shoppers rushed to buy cameras and kept Baker busy.
Two men began uncrating books, stacking them for the handlers on the left. Powell, smiling, arose, stretched, and took off his dark blue coat. The crowd applauded.
Over Powell's head a poster proclaimed, AMERICAN DREAM, AMERICAN HERO. His picture, smiling slightly, looked down on the scene. Powell, signing, propped a book under his right elbow.
Duncan DeGraff, Random House regional sales manager, began assisting customers along by placing his right hand under each one's left elbow. Security director Charles Simpson assisted.
Now books and buyers kept pace, parading before the general, and reached the end of the desk together.
Steve Kilroy stopped before Powell and raised a camera in his right hand, plastic bag uplifted in his left.
Better not try to take a picture through that bag, Powell advised.
``I hope you don't drive a ship!'' he quipped.
Powell arose to push the desk forward to get nearer the people.
Bill Smullen, his executive assistant, conferred a moment with him, then told a reporter the general was going overtime. The end of the line still was out of sight down the long aisle.
``These are his people,'' Smullen said.
The pace quickened, as many as six at a time moving nearly lock-step past the desk, as if the speeding production line were like the one that engulfed Charlie Chaplin in ``Modern Times.''
Powell leaned forward across the desk, supporting himself on his left arm, a tired schoolboy working laboriously to cipher; he was unflagging in his drive to meet the demand.
Watching, Rear Adm. Jack Kavanaugh, chief of the nation's post exchanges, said, ``I think he feels like he's home. This is the only military installation he visited.''
The general arose, put on his coat, straightened up. He thanked Eileen Rowan, Sylvia Parks, Phyllis Quinsy - ``My handlers,'' he said. He no longer looked weary. He and his entourage reached Prince Books on East Main Street by 3 p.m.
People who had not made it through the line at the Naval Base showed up, jubilant, at Prince, escort Janet Molinaro was happy to see.
At both stops, the crowd was diverse in age, race and dress, a cross-section, it looked like, of the American Dream.
Powell signed until 5 p.m., his allotted time, but kept on. He had resolved, at the last stop of his 23-city tour, to break the record of 60,000 autographed books. At 5:40 p.m., he signed 60,001. Wanda Chappell of Random House copped it.
And you think Colin Powell's not going to go for the presidency!
Twenty to one, he runs. by CNB