MILWAUKEE—When Trisha Hope was a little girl, she sat next to her mother on a rattan couch at their Texas home, watching the Republican National Convention (RNC) on TV with wide-eyed wonder.
“I was just so enthralled with the costumes and the hats and all that,” Ms. Hope, now a few months shy of 61, said, recounting a memory that made a big impression on her 52 years ago.
After watching the 1972 GOP convention in Miami, which resulted in the nomination of President Richard Nixon for a second term, the little girl vowed to her mother, Irene Psencik, that she would become an RNC delegate someday.
“I made her that promise, and she was so excited that I was paying attention to politics at nine years old,” said Ms. Hope, a Texas delegate to the 2024 GOP convention in Milwaukee—a role she fulfilled in honor of her mom.
In an interview at the convention, Ms. Hope told The Epoch Times that watching the convention with her mother when she was young was a special memory because “she and I didn’t have a lot of alone time together.” Ms. Psencik was a mother of six.
Regional Garb Adds Spirit
Like other members of the 2024 Texas delegation, Ms. Hope wore a cowboy hat during the RNC.
But hers was dressed up with attention-getting extras, including a “Terminator” bobblehead doll that looks like former President Donald Trump and mock 4th-of-July rockets. She estimates she and her hat were photographed about 100 times throughout the gathering.
“It’s fun,” she said about the special costumes that delegates wear. “It brings in the spirit of our country.”
After the convention, Ms. Hope reflected on how meaningful the RNC was for her.
“I shed a lot of tears, but they were good tears because I felt like I was honoring my mom in a very special way,” Ms. Hope said in a follow-up interview on July 25, a week after the RNC ended.
Throughout the convention, Ms. Hope wore a charm bracelet had belonged to her mother, who died at age 81 in 2014.
“I’m really proud that I honored what we had discussed so many years ago,” she said. By wearing the bracelet, she felt her mom was with her.
More Historic Than Usual
Ms. Hope said the historic significance of the RNC also struck her.
“To be a delegate for President Trump takes it to a whole other level, especially after almost coming so close to losing him,” she said, referring to the assassination attempt that he survived just two days before the convention began.
Although Ms. Hope has attended several dozen Trump rallies, she was not present on July 13 when a gunman made an attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
But it was extremely emotional for her to witness him make his first post-shooting public appearance at the RNC on July 15, she said.
Wearing a white bandage on his wounded right ear, the former president waved to the cheering delegates and guests who filled the Fiserv Forum convention site.
That same day, former President Trump named Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate.
At the pinnacle of the convention on July 18, the former president accepted his party’s nomination and made his first public remarks about the shooting.
He and Mr. Vance celebrated becoming the new Trump-Vance ticket with music and a cascade of balloons dropping onto the convention floor, a traditional finale.
“It was so exciting, just thrilling to be there,” Ms. Hope said.
Ms. Hope said her mother would be in awe of her daughter experiencing so much history. She thinks her mom probably would have been a fan of the former president, too.
“She liked people who spoke their mind and spoke the truth,” Ms. Hope said.
