America Meets in Washington to Witness History

Among the millions who turned Barack Obama’s inauguration and the National Mall into a sea of optimism and American community, George Henderson will not be counted. He died in 1981.

But Henderson’s 65-year-old son knows his late father was there in spirit. Jim Henderson, who lives in the Washington suburbs, brought along a 1956 mug shot taken of his father after his arrest during Martin Luther King Jr.’s bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

Henderson’s eyes crinkle with joy at the thought of his father viewing the scene of millions of people of all colors celebrating a black president. The elder Henderson “put his family on the line. It was not in vain,” says Henderson, a retired Air Force major. As he speaks, a band plays “Amazing Grace.”

Tuesday’s swearing-in drew an unprecedented turnout–from the lucky 240,000 with tickets on the Capitol grounds to the folks miles away who could merely soak up the historic moment’s warmth and watch on giant television screens.

“Wow” was a common sentiment for those viewing the sweep of humanity crowded shoulder to shoulder from the Capitol to past the Washington Monument. The crowd sprawled on toward the Lincoln Memorial where, it was lost on no one, King delivered his famous speech that is now a prequel to the election of the nation’s first African American president.

“We’ll never see this again. Take a look,” says actor Dustin Hoffman, one of many celebrities who flocked to Washington, sweeping his hand from the Capitol grounds toward the sea of people.

Person after person marveled at how such a large crowd could be so friendly. People stopped to help each other as they crammed onto the Mall; strangers on the region’s Metrorail system struck up conversations; chants and songs broke out.

But what everyone was waiting for was the moment when Obama raised his right hand and repeated the oath taken by 43 presidents before him.

“This is my moon walk moment,” says Kim Kramer, 56, of Crawfordville, Fla. “It’s that stopped moment where we all are together.”

So close together that Kramer was never able to spread the blanket he brought to sit on.

And a long morning it was for Kenneth Ho, 63, and his friend Charslene Kanoa, 57, both Hawaiians from the island Oahu. Ho, a retired Honolulu firefighter, says they left their suburban Virginia hotel by car at 4 a.m. and ran into gridlock before reaching a Metro station. Six hours later they were standing on the Capitol grounds with a peek at the podium and a Jumbotron. Kanoa says she staved off grumpiness by contemplating the toil of the nation’s Founding Fathers and of the slaves who built some of Washington’s grand monuments.

Kanoa, of Hawaiian descent, figures the day is even more meaningful for African Americans in the crowd. It certainly means a lot to Elaine Hobbs. “Our parents used to say, ‘You can be president of the United States, and you knew it would never happen,” says the 58-year-old retired information technology professor from Cleveland. “Now it can happen.”

Hobbs, who left her son’s home in Virginia before sunrise and slogged through a lengthy Metro train ride, would have been happy to be anywhere in the vicinity of the event. But providence had made her day even better. As she stopped by congressional offices Monday looking for a ticket, she joked on a crowded elevator that no one else could get on without giving her a ticket. A Pennsylvania congressman handed one over.

Whether the tickets came by a fluke like Hobbs’, by dint of political connection or by congressional lottery, everyone had to wait to get into the standing-room and seated ticket areas on the Capitol grounds.

Perry Plumart’s tickets came from his job working for the chief administrative officer of the House. Plumart oversees special projects like making the House of Representatives more environmentally friendly—such as recycling stationery and using energy-efficient lighting for the Capitol Dome. As soon as Obama was elected, Plumart was inundated with people asking for tickets.

“This is off the charts,” he says, waiting in a security line with the lucky recipients of his tickets, his wife, Mary O’Driscoll, and their 12-year-old daughter, Margaret.

Kim Kramer’s wife, Terri, 54, wearing jeans and a parka, says a well-dressed couple who waited with them an hour and a half to get into the standing-room-only ticketed area remarked on the equality of it all. The Kramers later watched as former President Bush lifted off in a Marine helicopter and headed out of town.

It was a long day in the cold for all, including Marcia Rafte, 62, of Oneida, N.Y., whose 76-year-old husband, Jim, got tickets because he’s the longest-serving county supervisor in the state.

“My feet are only half numb. I’ve gotten all the exercise I can use for about three weeks and I’m thrilled to be here,” she says, huffing slightly in her climb up Capitol Hill.

The day was especially moving for the many in the crowd—blacks and whites—who had lived through the Jim Crow era of segregation.

“I was forced to sit in the back of the bus, beaten up by grown white men,” says Barbara West, a 59-year-old African American from Dallas. “I never thought I would see a white man walking around with a button with a picture of a black man that says 'Mr. President.'”

There were indeed Obama buttons, and hats and shirts and earrings. As the crowd spilled off the National Mall, a phalanx of vendors greeted them with enough mugs, tees and other souvenirs to fill a house.

Amid all the hawking, one man was trying to buy: His sign offered $10 for each inauguration ticket stub. But the crowd streamed by, clutching tight to their fragments of history.

Still reveling after Obama’s words had finished echoing down the mall, Ngina Lythcott, 63, of Boston, hopes the public will heed his call to become more engaged.

“Once a black man can walk through a door, he makes a hole all the rest of us can fit through,” says Lythcott, an African American college dean who as a teenager was arrested 25 times during civil rights protests. “The civil rights movement was about my freedom. This is about everyone.”

Tamara Lytle was a correspondent and Washington bureau chief for the Orlando Sentinel from 1997 to 2008.