Look Back at ‘Ticket Central’ for President Bush

A Marquette business owner is relieved the White House hasn’t asked her to do this time what she did in 2004, when President George W. Bush came to the U.P.

Northern Stationers in Marquette served as ‘ticket central’ back then.

Anyone who wanted to go to the campaign rally had to pick up tickets at the store on a specific date ahead of time — first come, first served.

Owner Denise Bouscher says it was frantic.

She says they started handing out the tickets at 9am, but when she arrived at 7:30 that day there was already a huge line.

Bouscher says the business received 400 phone calls in the first 2 hours of the day, and she also heard from many acquaintances she’d forgotten she even knew who were trying to obtain tickets.

She had to turn a lot of people away.

President Bush’s visit to Marquette was the first one by a sitting president since William Howard Taft in 1911.

11,000 people came to the Superior Dome to listen to him, the largest crowd ever at the dome.

But when the White House later sent a thank–you letter for the store’s help, they sent it to the wrong store.

Denise says a competing business received the letter instead.