This was one of those classic cases of a man born to wear a certain kind of hat. Never was there a greater moment of kismet betweenn lid and head.

Standing in front of the stage where Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was soon to arrive to deliver a rousing stump speech, stood Ronnie Fuld, a tall, thin, elegant black man in a neatly pressed blue-striped shirt and his hat - a dark, ever so very slightly rumpled brown fedora with the brim turned up ever so gently.

To put it simply it was one of the greatest hats I had ever seen. I hat that had that look about it, which said: “The stories I could tell you.” This was a hat of history, a hat of culture, a hat that had been places, done things, seen stuff.

“Oh lord, please,” Fuld laughed when asked about his hat, agreeing he and his hat had been around.

Fuld bought the hat in 1979 while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany. They have been inseparable ever since.

A retired Sergeant First Class, Fuld was playing a bit of hooky from his teaching position at Palm Harbor University High School, where he conducts a course on world history. Three of his sons serve in the military. Two have survived tours of duty in Iraq.

Fuld wanted to attend Obama’s rally for two reasons.

First he was hoping to hear if the candidate would say anything about recruiting former military personnel to become teachers. Alas the issue didn’t come up.

And secondly, Fuld, who while he voted for Obama in the Florida primary, still hasn’t made up his mind between the Illinois senator and John McCain, whose military service and time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam the retired sergeant admires greatly.

Then there was the lapel pin thing. Although he recently started wearing an American flag lapel pin, Obama had been roundly criticized by his opponents for not wearing the adornment. And it bothered Fuld, too.

There was no gentle way to put this to Fuld.

Was he aware if you log onto the official presidential websites of: Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower, that none of them -Republican and Democrat alike - are wearing an American flag lapel pin?

Indeed, the only official portrait of an American president wearing the flag pin is the current incumbent, George W. Bosh.

Fuld was mildly stunned. “Really?”

Yep, really.