Starting his Father's Day celebration a few days early, President Obama made a surprise lunch stop at Kenny’s BBQ Smokehouse to eat with military dads and local barbers as part of a new campaign to promote fatherhood.
"These guys are also young fathers, and they're doing a great — he’s got four kids. He’s got two," Obama said, motioning to the two military fathers. "And Michelle and I have been working a lot with military families, trying to support them. When these guys are deployed sometimes, they're leaving the family behind. I just want to make sure they get support."
The administration's new “Fatherhood Buzz” initiative is a program aimed toward providing fathers with "positive information through barbers and barber shops as a part of the administration’s longstanding Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative,” according to the White House.
"The reason the two older gentlemen are here is, as I was mentioning, barbershops are where a lot of men go, and we want to work with them — we want to work with barbershops to figure out how we can get better information to fathers about resources that are available to them so they can find job training programs; they can
find support groups for fathers," Obama said over BBQ piled onto polystyrene containers.
"Because the more information we’re getting out there to folks about how they could take responsibility for their kids, make sure that they're in their child’s lives, help support their mother even if they're not living with the mother, makes a huge difference."
The president lunched on ribs, collard greens, black-eyed peas and rice and a corn muffin from the popular Capitol Hill restaurant.
"All right, guys, thank you," he said as the media was ushered out. "We’re going to eat in peace now."
