Who's on Obama's VP short list?

WILMINGTON -- Eighty-two-year-old Jean Weiss sees in Sen. Barack Obama the wisdom and courage of her late husband, a German-born American hero who flew 50 missions in World War II and later became a peace activist.

Her husband, E. Karl Weiss, died in 1992 of cancer of the esophagus, just four years into the New York couple's retirement to Wilmington.

And so Weiss knew Obama was her candidate when he said at a debate many months ago that should he become president, he would sit down with America's enemies and try to work it out.

Weiss told Obama as much Monday in an exchange that brought down the house at UNC-Wilmington.

What brought her there, though, was a long life that gave her three children and a caring husband, who was a grounds and building superintendent at a parochial school in New York.

"He was a peacemaker," she said. "I loved him."

Now Weiss lives on a tiny pension and Social Security, but having once lived in Africa with her husband as a missionary, she realizes her wealth.

She attends a conservative evangelical church, where good people support the war and President Bush, she said, but when she heard Obama was coming to Wilmington, Weiss had to see him.

She told Obama he was not naive to offer to talk with America's enemies -- as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has suggested.

"You captured my heart," she told Obama. "Sir, that is not naivete; that is wisdom!"

The crowd whooped. Obama asked, "Will you be my running mate?"

Weiss left her cane hanging behind her on the railing and ran up the aisle to him.

He leaned down and told her, "Yours was the best speech yet," she recalled. "He said, 'Give me a kiss.' I don't remember if I kissed his cheek or he kissed mine."

Later, the audience crowded around, patting her shoulder.

"I would have loved to have my husband here with me today," Weiss said. "He would've said, 'Go up there and talk.'"