President Obama, Stevie Wonder, Bono & Purple Gate Woes: An Inauguration to Remember

Last weekend, we all know, was historic.  It's difficult to put into words just how incredible it was to be here in DC for all the festivities with millions of other people full of hope, to be a first-hand witness to what I'm sure will be one of the most pivotal events in my lifetime. Several friends and family conveyed their jealousy to me, and my response was that I'm almost jealous of myself!

The festivities began on Sunday with the Inauguration Welcome Concert at the Lincoln Memorial.  It was certainly the highlight of my Inauguration experience!  Having arrived with friends when the gates opened at 8am, we got a pretty good spot on the Mall and camped out eating and playing games until the concert began at 2:30.  You know when a concert kicks off with Bruce Springsteen and a full choir, it's gonna be a good one!

And we were not disappointed.  How can you be disappointed when you can't decide: Was the highlight Stevie Wonder singing 'Higher Ground'?  Or Mary J. Blige singing 'Lean on Me'?  But what about Tom Hanks' tribute to Abraham Lincoln?  Garth Brooks' rendition of 'Miss American Pie'?  Or maybe it was James Taylor, or John Legend, or Beyonce, or Usher, or Will.i.am, or Steve Carell, or Samuel L. Jackson, or Denzel Washington, or Jamie Foxx?  How in the world can you beat seeing Bono sing 'In the Name of Love'??  However, the highlight for me was seeing Barack Obama and hearing him speak in person for the first time.

I know that picture is woefully small, but if you look very hard near the center, you can see Barack and Michelle Obama walking down the steps.  Of all the places to hear him speak for the first time, I don't think anything can top the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Standing in the same place Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream Speech' 40+ years ago, Barack Obama addressed the nation on the eve of his Inauguration as the first African American president of the United States, fulfilling that dream in a very real way.  We were profoundly touched; it is an experience that will indelibly fixed in my memory.

As for the actual Inauguration, it is not quite as exciting, but an experience nonetheless!  A couple days after the election, I requested an Inauguration ticket from my Congressional Representative, but was immediately put on the waiting list (tickets are free, but limited, and only required for entrance to the areas closest to the Capitol building).  They said they had received requests numbering three times the amount of tickets available!  I assumed I would simply go to the Mall on Inauguration Day with the millions of other non-ticketed attendees, but the Friday before the event, I received an email that there had been a cancellation and there was a ticket available!  

So on Inauguration Day, I, with so many others, woke at 5am (something those who know me know I do NOT do for just anything!), bundled up for 20 degree weather, and headed downtown to the Purple Gate Entrance.  By the time I arrived at 6:30am (1.5 hours before the gate opened, and 5 hours before the ceremony began), the line was already at least a mile long, the bulk of which was inside the 3rd street tunnel.  Have you ever been contained in a tunnel with tens of thousands of other people?  It's a little scary!     

To make a long, sad story as short as possible, the thousands of us (all with purple tickets) pictured here stood in line for 5+ hours and finally emerged from the tunnel to find that we were in a line to nowhere.  There was no one telling us what to do or where to go, just a giant horde of people all heading to what we thought was the Purple Gate, only to find it closed!  It was a mess, a fiasco, and a disappointment to say the least.  No one was there to explain to us what was going on, and by the time we figured out we weren't getting in the gate, it was too late to go anywhere else.

So at 11:30, with nowhere to go, no screens to watch, an unable to hear anything, I called Kristen.  Like so many others around me, my experience of the Inauguration was, standing behind a closed gate just a few hundred feet from the Capitol building, listening to it on speaker phone from California, or New York, or Nebraska, or Texas.  

And somehow, despite the tragedy of not being able to get inside, I still felt as though I was 'there.'  There was something poignant about watching thousands of people clamor around cell phones to hear the oath and address of our new president.  Full of hope and anticipation, we knew we were witnesses to history.  I was there!