The Galveston County Daily News

WEBSTER — “Isn’t she that mother?”

That was Heather Connell’s question when she heard that the banner-toting crowds along Bay Area Boulevard were gathered either to welcome or protest Cindy Sheehan during her planned visit to Webster.

But Sheehan, the mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq, never made it to U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay’s south Houston office, the site of Thursday’s rally.

Her tour van, which left Crawford on Wednesday after a 26-day anti-war vigil outside President Bush’s ranch, got stuck in traffic, said John Cobarruvias, president of the Bay Area New Democrats.

Sheehan stopped by DeLay’s office in Stafford instead. The congressman’s aides said Sheehan did not schedule an appointment, and he was not available to meet Thursday.

Protests continued in Webster without her, with some shaking “Al-Qaida agrees with Cindy Sheehan” banners and others waving “Stop War” signs.

Friendswood resident Connnell, 22, said her occupational therapy session happens to be in the same building as DeLay’s office. She got to her appointment early, so she stood near the office entryway watching the action.

“As long as they aren’t doing anything violent, there is nothing wrong with it,” she said, adding that she knows little about Sheehan, a woman who some call a hero and others a traitor.

While waving her “I am a Tom DeLay fan” fan in the afternoon heat, League City resident Shirley Hendrickson said she believes the peace movement compromised the Vietnam War.

“They are trying to repeat the 1960s,” she said. “I don’t want to see this war go the way Vietnam did.”

As she and about 55 other war supporters lined the sidewalk behind a row of DeLay yard signs, about 30 Sheehan supporters stood on separate sections of pavement and grass.

Sheehan began camping in a ditch near the President Bush’s Crawford ranch Aug. 6. Her vigil grew to include thousands of supporters, a folk concert by Joan Baez and — starting Wednesday — a three-week, 25-state tour scheduled to end in a mass anti-war protest on Sept. 24 at the nation’s capitol.