Hurley TJ Coleman III didn’t campaign to be chosen for last week’s special campaign visit with President Biden. In fact, when he learned his family was among the frontrunners to meet with the commander in chief, he suggested a number of others who would represent Saginaw’s issues and concerns.
But the Biden team found their voice for March 14th in a young family man from a highly-regarded clergy household, now helping lead the local fight against poverty as director of the Saginaw County Community Action Center.
A week has passed since the invite became official, but Coleman still feels he is in a dream, with well-wishers asking, “How cool is that?” and “Wasn’t that amazing?”
Another question was, “How did you end up on that golf course?” For that specific detail, it was TJ himself, not Biden’s handlers, who called the shot.
The operatives asked about activities he enjoyed with 13-year-old Hurley IV, a White Pine Middle seventh-grader and one of three children with Tanyika, his wife. His first thought went to Pleasant View with the golf-ball sign on Barnard Road north of Shattuck, an affordable nine-hole layout and practice range nestled in a neighborhood between the city limits and Fashion Square Mall.
“It’s like the people’s golf course, people from all incomes and ethnic groups, a real melting pot, and I felt Pleasant View would make a good representation for Saginaw,” Coleman explained.
Hurley IV told Biden about an under-par birdie score he registered on a par three, with a tee shot longer than a football field and then a 14-foot putt. In turn, the president spoke of taking up golf at age 36 after excelling at other traditional sports during his youth. Practice putts were taken on an indoor rug, instead of outdoors, because of rainy skies.
TJ learned of the Biden team’s interest from his father, Bishop Hurley J. Coleman Jr. of World Outreach Campus on Bay near Weiss, on March 10, four days before the event. His first reaction was that he was being pranked, but Dad’s dead-serious demeanor indicated otherwise.
He prepared a list of issues on the president’s ledger, from education to employment to the environment. He didn’t dodge Biden’s main challenge, inflation, speaking of his middle-class family.
“For myself and my son,” he summarizes, “it was a lifetime moment.”
