Traverse City Record-Eagle

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  • Angel Elsenheimer and her daughter Jayla, 6, protest outside of Hampel’s Key and Lockshop Thursday. Douglas Tesner

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November 6, 2008

5:40 p.m.: ‘N’ word prompts protest

BY MELISSA DOMSIC

TRAVERSE CITY — Six-year-old Jayla Elsenheimer marched around the sidewalk, brandishing a copy of today’s Record-Eagle with “Shame on you” written in red marker across the story of a local gun shop employee who made racist remarks against President-elect Barack Obama.

Her mother, Angel Elsenheimer, stood beside her with a similar poster and an American flag.

They displayed their patriotism in front of Hampel’s Key and Lockshop on Randolph Street in Traverse City, where shop workers on Wednesday flew the American flag upside down in protest of Obama’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election.

A Hampel’s employee, Rod Nyland, of Traverse City, was quoted in today’s paper calling Obama a “ n-----” when explaining the gunshop’s inverted flag stance.

Elsenheimer protested after “reading in the article in the paper today over breakfast with my family and trying to discuss with them exactly what was wrong with what happened ... that something like this could happen in such a small, relatively close-knit community is disgusting.”

“It was a topic in a lot of the upper elementary classes today,” said Elsenheimer, who works at TCAPS Montessori school. “I think it’s a terrible, sad thing to not only see in the paper, but hear on the radio, and children don’t understand in a lot of cases. Trying to explain that kind of hate is sad and challenging.”

Hampel’s on Thursday reversed course and flew the flag correctly.

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