Cheering across the region as Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States.
From the Palace Theatre downtown...
To students at Case Western Reserve University...
The ornate Akron Civic Theatre…
And, at the big party at the Wolstein Center.
Jubilant crowds at just four of the watch parties in our area. With so many people taking time off from work to go to the events, this was clearly no ordinary inauguration. At Case Western Reserve University, undergraduates sat next to students from the nearby Cleveland School of the Arts to watch the historic moment. Wydell Dixon is a School of the Arts sophomore. He looked dapper, dressed up for the occasion.
DIXON: Feeling happy, excited, feeling real good today.
Latisha James is the director of community partnerships at Case Western, and helped arrange this event. But it was a special day for her as well.
JAMES: I can’t compare it to any feeling. It’s beyond new year’s, it’s beyond your birthday. It’s magical. That’s the only way to explain it. Today is magical.
People felt some magic while watching the inauguration at the Palace Theater in PlayhouseSquare.
OUTCALT: I mean it’s very very moving.
Jane Outcalt lives in Cleveland.
OUTCALT: It’s such a historic moment and to be part of it gives you the chills. Just chills.
There were upwards of 2000 there watching and cheering Mr. Obama on a large screen. After seeing the oath, Clevelander Mary Gails was happy to move on from the last eight years.
GAILS: I think we’ve had our hard time, and we’re certainly have had our good time, and we’re going to have to come together and do what we need to do so we can have the better life and the best life out of something that was so bad.
And, across the region, there was pride among African Americans witnessing the inauguration of the nation’s first black president.
Rhonda Riggins is a native Clevelander with a dad from Georgia. She was watching at the Wolstein Center.
RIGGINS: My parents were from the south and they’re not alive, but if they were alive, however old they are, they would have been down here. My father, he would have never believed that this day is happening. ….
And, for those who volunteered for Mr. Obama’s campaign, seeing the inauguration was the culmination of hope and hard work.
Phillis McDermott was a volunteer in Akron and watched the event at the Civic Theatre.
McDERMOTT: I believed in him from the first. I wasn’t sure if it could be done, but I thought that it could be done and I was going to do my damndest to help it get done.
And seeing Barack Obama become President Obama on the screen in Akron was a fitting ending.
At PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland City Councilman Jay Westbrook said the watch parties gave our region a taste of what it was like to be in DC.
WESTBROOK: Our version of the mall is reflective of the fact that people want to, as President Obama has called on us, they want to join hands and pull together.
And, Americans will have to pull together. Yesterday’s steep stock market selloff was a reminder of how much the economy is still teetering. As the new president says, today the real work begins.