The Jeopardy category for $500 is Famous Hometowns. Alex Trebek reads the following answers: Indianapolis, Indiana; Carthage, Tennessee; and Casper, Wyoming. The contestants now have less than a split second to hit the button, signaling that they know the right answer (in the form of a question, of course).

I’ve discovered that you can’t watch Jeopardy without playing along. My wife and I usually watch the show during dinner. Both of us are rather competitive, so we usually pay closer attention to the categories on the tube than the chicken on our plates. We try to be lightning-quick to be the first one with the correct answer. However, for the question posed above, both of us would sit in silence.

How about you? Would you know that the correct question is: “What are the hometowns of the last three vice presidents?”

What if the answer had been Plains, Georgia; Hope, Arkansas; or Crawford, Texas? Most of us would recognize these as hometowns of past or current presidents.

Don’t you think it is strange that we know the hometowns of our presidents, but not the hometowns of our vice presidents? Sure, being the most powerful person in the world is a big deal, but the second most powerful person is still pretty high in the pecking order. Yet, less than half of Americans would be able to identify what side of the Mississippi River the vice president grew up on. That’s sad, considering the odds of a correct guess are 50/50.  

I wonder how many people know where Joe Biden grew up. Ask 20 people on the street, and 15 of them would probably ask who Joe Biden is. Even if they did recognize his name, few would be able to pick him out of a lineup, and an even smaller number would know where he is from. I don’t recall seeing Greta Van Susteren or Geraldo Rivera running around Claymont, Delaware interviewing Joe Biden’s elementary school classmates. It wouldn’t surprise me if Kristan Cole and Judy Patrick have had more national air time than Mr. Biden.

Now, ask the same number of folks if they recognize the name Sarah Palin. Better yet, to make it fair, just show a picture of her. Unless someone just returned from four weeks in the bush, everyone would recognize the governor’s picture or at least think it was Tina Fey portraying a vice presidential candidate on Saturday Night Live.

Face recognition is one thing, but it takes more than that to capture the interest of the nation. Jennifer Aniston may be one of the recognizable celebrities in the country, but most people’s curiosity with her ends with wondering if she is still in love with Brad Pitt.

That is not the case with Governor Palin. America is starving for every tidbit of information they can find about her, her family and the town she grew up in. We know she wears Kawasaki 704 eyeglasses, uses Max lipstick and likes to crack jokes about pit bulls and hockey moms. We can recite the names of her five children (no easy feat if you are not a Van Halen fan). Her husband, the “first dude” as we have come to know him, has had more media exposure than Barack Obama’s second dude.

However, what’s most unusual is not our interest in the Palins, but rather our interest in the town that raised her. I have heard that since Sarah, as you locals call her, made her big announcement, you have had more reporters in Wasilla than moose. Anchorage is sold out of rental cars and the Windbreak Café is cooking up a storm. In fact, the only satellite uplink truck within 200 miles has been operating nonstop. Maybe the city council of Claymont, Delaware would consider selling its satellite truck to KTUU-TV, because they’re not using it.

Some contend the media’s main purpose for infiltrating Wasilla was to uncover information that could be used against the Republican ticket. I’m sure that was the motivation of many, but little did they know that the more air time they gave Wasilla, the more they raised the curiosity of the rest of the country, or as you call us, the lower forty-eight.

Wasilla has become the most talked about town in the U.S., and its name recognition is as strong as some recent presidents’ hometowns. Is this a coincidence or could it be prophetic? Regardless of the outcome in November, what I have come to realize is that your governor – and possibly our next vice president – is the product of hundreds of good people like you, who call Wasilla home. The hand of God may have raised Sarah Palin to where she is today, but there is not a part of her life that doesn’t bare your fingerprints.

Wasilla couldn’t be located much further west from the center of the U.S., but it represents the same values, hopes and dreams of middle America. Wasilla isn’t even considered to be in the “heartland” of our great country, although we are learning that you have a heart as big as your state. Your small town of 9,000 people has the attention of the world, and I believe that one day we will have much to thank you for.

Geographically, I live about as far away from Wasilla as you can get, yet I am proud to consider you a neighbor. In fact, after some deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that you call the rest of the country the lower 48 for the wrong reason. You probably use that term because everyone is south of you, but I think it fits because the entire nation is looking up to you.    

Wasilla, Alaska …hum, seems like all the other vice presidential hometowns are just “palin” in comparison.  

Author: Denny Grimes, CRS, ABR, MBA. . Denny lives in Ft. Myers, Florida and is a friend of Brad and Kristan Cole. He can be reached at denny@dennygrimes.com. Used with permission.