If you watched the dazzling opening ceremonies of the Olympics last week, you probably remember when President George Bush used the athletes’ cell phones to chat spontaneously with a few surprised fellow Americans in their homes around the country.

So who were these select people who got to talk with the president on live TV as the rest of the world looked on? No doubt there were a couple of mothers in the group; athletes are always saying “Hi, Mom” when they get on camera.

It might surprise you to learn, however, that one of the people the president spoke with that night was a woman named Lynn Wetmore, who lives in Madawaska.

“I’m still walking on cloud nine,” said northern Maine’s newest celebrity. “My whole family is.”

Now, to understand how the 36-year-old school nurse and mother of two came to be so honored, we have to go back a ways. Wetmore was born in Edmundston, New Brunswick, and raised in neighboring Madawaska. As one of five siblings who practically grew up on ice skates, Wetmore became good enough to compete with the Canadian Maritime figure-skating team in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Wetmore, who graduated from Madawaska High School in 1984, eventually hung up her skates to study nursing in Massachusetts. Competition used to upset her stomach terribly, so she never regretted leaving the sport. Her older brother, Charlie Cyr, after graduating from the University of Maine in 1981, became a skating judge for Canada and then headed to California to further his career in the figure-skating world. He became a U.S. National judge, then an international judge, and eventually made his way up the judging ranks to the World Championships and the Olympics.

Cyr is now the team leader of the U.S. Olympic Figure Skating Team that is competing at the 2002 winter games.

“As team leader,” said his sister, “Charlie is in charge of everything. The skaters, the medical team, whatever needs to be done, he’s the guy.”

It also means that Cyr is friends with some of the biggest names in the sport: Michelle Kwan, Todd Eldredge, Sarah Hughes, the whole gang. Cyr has seen a lot in his 20-year career, from the time Tonya Harding’s bodyguard whacked Nancy Kerrigan across the knee years ago to the recent gold-medal controversy involving the Canadian and the Russian pair-skating teams.

Now, back to last week’s opening ceremonies and Wetmore’s brush with Olympic glory.

Wetmore was sitting at home, watching the spectacle with her husband and their two little boys. The parading athletes all had cell phones, and were using them often. Cyr used his to call Wetmore and say hello from Salt Lake City. He called her again during the ceremonies to say he was now sitting behind the orchestra with his U.S. team. The Wetmore kids, ages 8 and 5, got to see their Uncle Charlie on TV, standing next to the skater, Sasha Cohen, and went to bed happy.

Soon afterward, Wetmore’s husband retired for the night.

Then the president showed up, took his place among the athletes, and fired up the crowd with the words “Let’s roll.” Cyr called his sister in Maine to tell her excitedly that he was now standing just 4 feet from the president himself. Then he hung up. When he called again a few moments later, he said, “Lynn, there’s someone here I want you to speak with.”

At that point, Wetmore figured her brother was about to put his famous pal, Kwan, on the line, or maybe even Eldredge. It was all very exciting, indeed, since Wetmore happened to be sitting alone in front of a TV set in Madawaska, Maine.

Then, over the open line, she heard her brother say, “Excuse me, Mr. President, this is my sister Lynn Wetmore on the phone. Could you talk to her?”

In the millisecond before The Voice came on the line, Wetmore’s heart began to race; She felt the old stomach butterflies from her competitive-skating days. What the heck was she supposed to say to the president of the United States of America?

“Oh, Charlie,” she thought, “I don’t believe you’re doing this.”

Then, with Bush’s face beaming at her from the TV screen, Wetmore heard him say, “Lynn, this is your president. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.”

Not surprisingly, Wetmore was slightly hysterical at that moment. So when she responded, “Oh my God! Mr. President, it’s a pleasure to speak with you from northern Maine,” her words sounded a bit like a scream. With so much noise in the background, her conversation with the president ended pretty quickly. She went to the bedroom to tell her husband, James, what he had missed.

“I ran in and jumped right on top of him, of course,” she said. “He said I was going to wake the kids if I didn’t quiet down and I said I don’t care if I wake them.”

Word about Wetmore’s unexpected Olympic moment spread quickly through little Madawaska. So did the news that President Bush, upon noticing Cyr’s lapel pin honoring Madawaska for its blue-ribbon elementary school, had extended his heartfelt congratulations to the town.

“Dad passed away two weeks before the Olympics, so Charlie was back here then,” Wetmore said. “He went into the schools and talked about figure skating and the Olympics and all, so the kids were all looking for him on TV. It was really a great moment around here. I certainly wasn’t planning on any of this. But I’m so proud that my brother would make the family and the town part of the 2002 Olympics like that. It was so neat. It made me feel like I was really there.”

Tom Weber’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.