By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
Elizabeth Dole admitted to members of Cornerstone Church that she thought her Sunday morning visit would be of the low-key variety.
Walk in and have a seat. Shake hands and greet a few people on the way out the door.
“I thought I was going to be part of the congregation,” Dole said.
But she soon learned what just about everyone who has visited Cornerstone has come to realize ó there are very few things about the Webb Road church that are low-key.
Dole, a Republican U.S. Senator in the midst of a close fight for re-election, is pitted against Democrat Kay Hagan, a five-term state senator from Greensboro.
On Sunday, the Rev. Bill Godair, Cornerstone’s pastor, called Dole to the stage during the 9 a.m. service. He repeated the request for her to speak at the 11 a.m. service.
“Put your hands together and welcome Sen. Elizabeth Dole,” Godair commanded, members of his congregation doing exactly as they were instructed, clapping loudly.
Dole shared with members of the congregation stories of her Grandmother Cathey, a woman who she said lived to be 100.
Dole said that when the time finally came to put her grandmother in a nursing home, the woman wasn’t upset in the slightest.
“She said, ‘That’s great,’ ” Dole recalled Sunday morning. “She said, ‘There may be people there who don’t know the Bible.’ ”
Dole said she learned a lot from her grandmother and practices those teachings in her daily life.
“I try wherever I can to be a witness,” she said.
Dole said she appeared Saturday night at the NASCAR event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and said she was proud that a chapel at the track was open to drivers and their families prior to the race.
“They are families very much of men and women of faith,” Dole said of the NASCAR community.
She recalled her years of service for President Ronald Reagan and said she remembered sitting with him once just a few minutes before he delivered a speech to thousands.
Dole said she told Reagan during their moments together that he never appeared riled, always calm. She said she asked Reagan his secret.
Dole said Reagan told her that when he was governor of California, each day he’d find himself confronted with what seemed insurmountable problems.
Reagan told Dole he was often tempted to pass the matter of addressing those problems to others. But Dole said Reagan told her that one day he realized the error of looking at the situation from that perspective.
“I started looking up instead of back,” Reagan said, referring to seeking guidance from God.
Dole said she learned from that conversation with the former president.
“Isn’t that beautiful?” she asked members of the congregation at Cornerstone. “That’s the way I look, too.”
Dole said she tries daily to remember some simple rules of living.
“We are blessed to be a blessing,” she said. “We receive, so we might give.”
After Dole spoke, Godair called his son, Josh, to the stage so he might meet the senator. Godair said Josh has enlisted in the military and is leaving this week for basic training in Missouri.
Godair said he was handling his son’s impending departure fairly well, but said he couldn’t say the same for his wife and Josh’s mother.
“Pray for me,” Godair instructed the congregation, laughing as he spoke. “I’ve got to live with the mama.”
Godair said he strives to bring as many politicians as he can to Cornerstone. Pat McCrory, the Republican candidate for governor, spoke at the church a few weeks ago, Godair said, and even Hagan, Dole’s opponent, addressed members there earlier this year.