The day I hugged Barack Obama

10 September: Scott Van Duzer, owner of Big Apple Pizza in Florida, gave the president a bear hug. It became a defining image of the 2012 election campaign
presidential bear hug
Pizza to go: President Barack Obama is picked up by Scott Van Duzer, owner of Big Apple Pizza and Pasta Italian Restaurant during a visit to the restaurant in Fort Pierce, Florida. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images


I am a Republican. I voted for Bush. But I voted for the president four years ago because he seemed enthusiastic and excited about trying to make our country better. When he came to the store he was exactly that way. He is very genuine.

The next day we started getting hate mail. People were calling in hundreds of dollars of bad food orders. When we realised, we sent it to homeless shelters. And then that story came out, and people were calling from all over the country saying: "Here's $100 – deliver to the firefighters. Deliver to United Way…" We had literally thousands of dollars in orders.

The White House invited me down to the last debate. My wife and I ended up sitting right next to the first lady. And the following day he was having a rally and I got to do a five-minute speech and got to introduce the president to 11,000 people.

The hug gets old, but the spirit of America… it was just me being me, but to a lot of people it represented what we need: the country getting together, and an end to division. Here was a white guy who is a Republican and an African American who is a Democrat and president, and we are hugging. I get letters from people saying it lifted the spirit of the country, and that's pretty wild to hear – here am I, a pizza guy, and I lifted the spirit of the country.

Some people tried to turn that hug into something bad – but so much good came even out of the bad. It was wonderful.