"WITNESS” TO OBAMA’S FIRST INAUGURATION
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
My wife and I drove from
Kansas City, Missouri, to Washington, D.C. to partake in the epochal
inauguration of Illinois Senator, Barack Hussein Obama, as the first black
President of the United States in January 2009.
We spent the first night in
St. Louis with childhood friends. Departing early the next morning, I glanced
at, and was recognized by, my third grade “girl friend,” Gail, now, herself, a
school teacher, in a QT convenience store/gas station coffee aisle. I had not
seen her, easily, since the 1960s. My
joyous reunion with Gail and her adult daughter was compounded by my discovery
that, they, too, were meeting family members to drive to D.C. for the historic
inaugural. We were both amazed and
reassured by this double coincidence.
The drive was uneventful,
even restful--as my wife, Lyla, did most of the driving--until nightfall found
us on Highway 70 near its conjunction with Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West
Virginia, where it began to snow and sleet and rain, so heavily, the lane
dividers disappeared and visibility, too.
We had a choice to make: take the Pennsylvania Turnpike with its narrow
lanes and steep ascents and descents through the Allegheny Mountains; or drop
down into West Virginia and take our chances with that flatter, southern route
through the same mountains. We took the southern route, and spent the night in
southern Pennsylvania, 20 miles from West Virginia in a warm motel.
The next morning we arrived
in the District of Columbia, via Silver Spring, Maryland, on Sunday, January
19. Driving down “sweet” Georgia Avenue,
toward northwest Washington, nostalgia overwhelmed me; I was being mysteriously
summoned to “The Yard,” my alma mater, Howard University, “The Capstone of
Negro Education.” Relenting to the
spirit, I rolled onto main campus, past the security guard station, which
kindly waved me in, after looking at the mud on my car, my Missouri tags, and
that “don’t you know me” look in my confident eyes. Cars, as usual, were parked everywhere. But as fate, and the good Lord, would have
it, we found the perfect spot. We then
headed for Cramton Auditorium to see what was up.
Unbeknown to us, the Right
Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of
Christ, and confidante of Barack Obama, was just about to preach, when we
entered the overflowing vestibule. This
was too wonderful to imagine. Others, we
later learned, had been redirected to three different overflow facilities, so
massive were the earlier crowds. But,
our timing was exquisite. We walked
right in. We were blessed as Rev.
Wright, also a Howard alumnus, preached “till my dungeon shook, and my chains
fell off”.
Leaving Howard, we retrieved “Silver”
Inauguration tickets, and logistical information, from the Capitol Hill office
of our Congressman, the Honorable Emmanuel Cleaver II, Democrat from Kansas
City, Missouri, who had kindly befriended us.
Thereafter, we drove to 13th and “U” Street, N. W. , to Ben’s
Chili Bowl, in a vain attempt to procure a legendary half-smoke, newly
popularized--indeed sanctified--by an unannounced, but televised, visit of
President-Elect Barack Obama during the previous week. The line was too long to get in, so we
shopped among the outdoor vendors at a nearby Ethiopian flea-market, where all
things Obama were on sale. After
purchasing a few items, we headed to Northeast Washington to the residence of
my late mother’s first cousin, Edward Merriweather, our obliging host.
Edward and his wife, Clementine,
both retired school teachers, are natives of Canton, Mississippi, also my birth
place. Their sense of family and
hospitality are overwhelming. They
spoiled us. We certainly did not lack
for anything. Providentially, we resided
only three blocks from the D.C. Armory subway station, our means of
transportation to and from the inauguration at the Capitol.
The morning before the
inauguration, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I attended a Howard
University Law School Alumni Association luncheon, at Marriott Hotel, 14th and
Pennsylvania, N.W., where I delivered
the invocation, which was keynoted by Congressman Gregory Meeks of New York,
who was a year behind me at law school.
The empty seat on the dais next to me was to have been occupied by
Illinois Senator Roland Burris, another Howard Law alumnus, but he did not
appear. At the luncheon, I was pleased
to see my good friends, and Howard Law graduates Kamau King, Kwame Osei Reed,
Donald Thigpen, and Robert Bell, all NBA stalwarts, among others. That evening
we finally got our half-smokes from Ben’s!
Finally, the day of reckoning
arrived. We had been warned to arrive
early due to record crowds. We heeded
that advice, but it did not matter. The
crowd was prehensile, contiguous, viscous, alive. Getting to one’s designated area was an act
of grace, subject to fluid dynamics. The
logistics were designed to effectuate the very diverse crowd’s control, not to
expedite movement, nor to differentiate among ticket holders. No official knew anything about anything,
except “keep moving.” After hopelessly
battling the Mall crowd for 4 hours, and finally being blocked by a phalanx of
mounted police, I had a choice to make:
stand where I was and see and hear nothing pertaining to President Obama
, in the cold. Or, catch the subway back to my cousin’s house, where food,
beverages, warmth, a television and a front-row seat awaited me. Hello, Brother Obama! And good-bye, my brother! I booked.
Headed back to the subway
station, I encountered my lovely wife, standing in yet, another long serpentine queue, of course. Serendipitously, I had somehow passed her in
route to the National Mall, even though she had caught the train, before
me. When I told her I was headed back to
Edward’s home, owing to the lack of accessibility for “silver” ticket holders,
she declined my invitation to return, and ignored my admonition about lack of
access, and stuck it out. She claims
that she ended up hearing, but not seeing anything, being blocked by a tree
near the wading pool. As for me, I saw
and heard; ate and drank; was warm and well-seated, enjoying instant replay.
God bless America, and to
each his own!
Below are links to some
photos of our beautiful First Family:
