SIOUX CITY -- When Barack Obama raised his hands in victory a year ago, Monique Scarlett cried.

"The tears stand for hope," Scarlett, who is black, told me during an Election Night celebration at the Sioux City Eagles Club. "Dr. King's dream is a reality now."

I went back to Scarlett on Wednesday, asking her to describe the 12 months since the first black American won the White House. She focused on a scene that unfolded before her Monday, minutes after her airplane landed in Omaha. The pilot told passengers to wait while the body of a U.S. soldier killed in action was unloaded.

"It was very quiet as we waited," she said. "We got off the plane and walked into the airport. We looked out the windows and watched as soldiers saluted the coffin."

Again, she cried.

"That could have been my son," she said. "Actually, it was our son -- a son of the United States of America."

Health care reform. Job losses. Cash for Clunkers. Violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. All have been in the news -- and on the 44th president's plate -- since his historic election one year ago.

"I have prayed for President Obama every night," said Scarlett, who had flown to Houston late last week for the funeral of a relative. In Houston, she witnessed widespread homelessness, lines at shelters and learned of people still displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

The soldier's coffin on the flight home reaffirmed this: "We are in perilous times."

How has her president handled these storms?

"Barack Obama has done a phenomenal job," said Scarlett, a banking professional the past 10 years. "He inherited war and this economy, and he's not running from either. He's handling these situations head-on, which you must respect."

Many do. Many don't.

"My concern with our country is that things like Fox News find all the negatives rather than helping find solutions," she said.

Scarlett, 42, said she voted for Obama because he represented hope, change and the chance to unite a divided country. She met the Democratic candidate when he worshipped at her church, Mount Zion Baptist Church, in Sioux City, April 1, 2007.

She hadn't known of him long. Her oldest son, Leland Scarlett, introduced her to Obama a year before. Leland wrote a paper on Illinois' junior senator for a high school assignment. She proofread it before Leland turned it in.

"I asked him who this senator was," she said. "He told me, 'Hopefully, our next president.'"

Leland Scarlett was 18 last November when he voted in his first presidential election. Like most -- but not all -- of the family, he cast his vote for the community organizer who made history.

"I called my mom later that night and we cried," Monique Scarlett said. "My mother never thought she'd see the day."

A quarter of the way into his first term, Scarlett feels bullish enough to offer a bearish prediction about the next presidential race: Obama won't win it. The country's divisiveness knocks him from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

"Even if he isn't elected, he'll never be forgotten," said Scarlett. "You can't take history away from us."

Nor the memories of a night one year ago.