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A chronicle of the Inauguration, through East Greenwich eyes |
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Monday, 02 February 2009 |
BY ABBY FOX
“Very long, very exciting, and very cold” were Deidre Gifford’s words to describe the Presidential Inauguration last Tuesday in Washington, DC, when she saw her son and the rest of the East Greenwich High School band play in the parade for President Barack Obama.
“The kids were standing outside in the cold for a long, long time,” band director Brendan Carniaux said. “They lasted. I think they played on sheer adrenaline alone, because they were so cold.”
East Greenwich High School Principal Jeanine Nota-Masse said, “It was a once-in-a- lifetime experience. It was really amazing. Our kids hung in there when other kids were dropping out. We were the only group in our division that didn’t have people who dropped out. Our kids are real troopers. It was freezing cold and they were out there for hours.”
The teens left Providence on Sunday about 7 a.m., arriving in their hotel in Baltimore in the afternoon. Monday, they got up about 5 a.m., and headed for the Pentagon for an intense security clearance, which entailed several hours of sitting inside of, then standing outside of, their bus, while it was searched. While Chief Justice Roberts was administering the oath of office to Obama, students couldn’t see them: they were on the bus leaving the Pentagon for the Mall.
Waiting for the parade to get going, the kids had to stand around in their band uniforms, as they couldn’t wear coats. “They all hung in there,” Nota-Masse said. “They huddled together.”
They were lined up for the parade at 2:30, but didn’t march by Obama until close to 5:45.
Student Laura Paolino and others agreed that “we were cold,” but “Once we passed by him [Obama], I didn’t think about the cold.”
The parade’s delay, due in part to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seizure at the Presidential Luncheon, forced the kids to adjust to playing the entire route in the dark, except for one brief flooding of light as they marched by the President.
“The kids had a great time,” Carniaux said. “They had a blast, I think. It was an unbelievable experience. For them, this is the pinnacle of what a high school band can do; it’s the best band trip you could ever go on.”
Nota-Masse said a couple of the best memories she walked away with was seeing “the sea of people, and that we were a part of it,” and “to hear other people – the hotel, the bus drivers, the military personnel – compliment us on our kids, how wonderful, polite and cooperative they were during the whole thing. I was impressed. I’m so proud of them.”
Carniaux said the hotel told him “they were the best-behaved high school they’ve ever had.”
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Gifford knew that in order to catch her son, Will, in the parade, she would have to forego seeing the Inauguration. Given the crowds of about 1.5 million in one space, people had to choose in advance whether they would see one or the other; it wasn’t possible to see both.
After getting parade tickets Tuesday morning, Gifford and other family members sat on the parade route for hours, until at last Obama walked by. To their pleasant surprise, the crowds dispersed after the Obamas’ stroll, and the Giffords got closer.
“We were able to walk over to the grandstands and we watched the parade from right next to the Presidential viewing stand,” she said. “It was really cool.”
The darkness was interrupted by “very bright television lights in front of the stand,” Gifford said. “The band looked terrific. Their uniforms were great; their banner was great. They looked sharp. We were screaming and whistling and yelling. We could see the Obamas watching the parade as well as the kids, and that was very exciting, to see them walk in front of the president.”
After being outside in 20-degree weather for most of the day, “They were freezing,” Gifford said. “The kids had on layers underneath their uniforms, but they didn’t have boots, or mittens. They were really cold but they toughed it out.”
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Neal McNamara is another East Greenwich resident and proud parent who witnessed the parade, and his son, Aidan, who was in it.
“The band looked great,” he agreed. “It was cold. They were cold.” Still, “You could see they were really happy and excited. They were happy to see someone they knew, screaming for them. You wanted to make them feel they were appreciated.”
His son “swears up and down that he and Obama made eye contact,” he said. The celebration for Obama was “a family thing,” McNamara said. “We were hook, line and sinker for Obama.”
As an early Obama supporter, McNamara offers the perspective of an excited local and also of an active political participant, who went door-to-door campaigning and raised money at work and at home for Obama.
McNamara said he loved being with “all these punch-drunk happy people,” reveling in the thought that “everything we’ve worked for has come true.”
The past several years, he said, “I think a lot of us have been looking inward,” whereas with Obama, “he’s set a new tone, where people get involved. You could tell at the Inauguration, that there are a lot of people saying this is not the end; this is the beginning of the road.”
McNamara and his wife Elizabeth were one of the thousands of unlucky purple ticket-people who never got in to see the Inauguration.
Even though they had tickets, arriving at 7:45 in the morning, and walked for hours, three of which through a tunnel under the mall -- they weren’t allowed in.
“That was the low point,” he said. In the tunnel, “there were 15 to 20,000 people; there were no police, no volunteers, nobody giving us information,” he said. “It was strange. Some people said there were too many tickets given out. What I think happened is they didn’t have enough people manning the different gates. There were 50,000 purple ticket holders, and how you get 50,000 people through security, in three hours?
“There were a lot of disappointed people,” he said. “These were people working on the campaign, really committed. To get that close, and when you thought you had a guaranteed spot …was very disappointing. Some people were chanting, ‘Let us in, let us in,’” he said, but by 11:30, the McNamara knew they weren’t getting in.
“I went into a deep depression at that point,” he said. “Here I am, a block away, I’ve got a ticket, and I can’t get in. So the friends we were with got us to a hotel nearby and we watched it on TV. Our friends had been invited to a reception at the Willard Hotel to watch the parade, so we went. By 2:30, we were drinking champagne. I felt bad for a lot of other people in the line -- a ticket was all they had; this was the event they could participate in, nothing else.”
From a suite in the Willard Hotel, they watched the Obamas go by in the parade. Then “somebody at the reception gave me and my wife two tickets to the New England Ball that night,” he said. They had been advised “Bring a tux, bring a gown; you never know what’s going to happen,” and they were ready. “We were obviously very grateful,” he said.
But first, they wanted to see the parade.
“Once the president had passed by, most people along the parade route had left,” he said. “So we were able to get through, right up on the curb. After 45 minutes, the band came by.” Considering “a lot of these kids we’ve known from kindergarten,” the moment was “very sweet,” he said.
“We walked along with them for a couple blocks. When we got closer to the White House, security wouldn’t let us through,” so it was time to get changed, to go to the New England Ball at Union Station, which McNamara said, “was gorgeous. We got there and unlike the ticket fiasco of the morning, we got in quickly. The crowd was very manageable; food and drink were readily available.” The McNamaras danced to Motown and James Taylor, and then saw Vice President Joe Biden and his wife and finally, the Obamas – for their last dance of the night – a mere 50 feet away.
“We left about 1 a.m., which was about as long as I was able to last,” he said. “It was a day of ups and downs. Even with the enormous disappointment of the morning,” he said, “just being there, and the energy” was excitement in itself. “There were so many people there, so excited, it was quite something.”
He reflected, “If it weren’t for the fact that all the people in the tunnel were happy Obama people, it could be a riot,” he said.
Gifford left the city with a similar sense of amazement, how 1.5 million people could congregate without any trouble.
Gifford got up at 2 in the morning on Tuesday and was in the subway by 4 a.m., to make it to the day’s events on time. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” she said. “There was an amazing feeling in the capital; everyone was enthusiastic and happy and proud,” she said. “There was a great spirit. I know some people were disappointed. But there were no incidents, no arrests, no fights, no injuries, and to have that many people crammed with no incidents, shows how people wanted to cooperate and they wanted the day to be a positive experience.”
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