Tina Maria Manning stood there listening, her head swirling with feelings of hope, joy and amazement.

Manning, secretary for the Stony Brook HSC Chapter, had spent five hours on a bus to make it to Washington, D.C., in time. And even though she didn’t have a ticket to the inaugural, just being on the street in the nation’s capital to witness history—an event she never thought she’d see in her lifetime—was just fine.

Around her, a few hundred people, most of them strangers, cried, laughed and cheered. They hugged each other as they huddled around radios and cell phones that doubled as TV sets, listening and watching the once-unthinkable—an African-American taking the oath of office as president of the United States.

It was happening. Barack Obama was being sworn in as president.

“When he took the oath, the people who were with us, perfect strangers, were hugging and kissing each other,” she said. “People would just come up to you and hug you. Everyone was cheering and crying and so friendly. It was very emotional.”

Manning was one of a handful of UUPers who traveled to Washington on Jan. 20 to see Obama take the oath as America’s 44th president, an event that attracted a crowd estimated at 1.8 million.

Tickets please

While most UUPers who made the trek had tickets to attend the inaugural, only one actually got in to see it.

Stony Brook HSC Chapter President Kathleen Southerton and her husband, Tim, scored two sets of tickets for the event; they won the tickets in lotteries offered by Sen. Charles Schumer and U.S. Rep. Steven Israel.

Southerton, who stayed in Virginia with relatives, arrived in Washington at 5:15 a.m. and made it to the National Mall at around 8 a.m. There she stood in the biting 15-degree weather, waiting for hours before watching Obama make history on one of the Jumbotron screens erected for the event.

“There were huge crowds of people behind us,” said Southerton. “It was such an experience. Just the sheer number of people and the diversity of the crowd, and everyone was so happy.”

Tunnel of doom

UUP President Phillip Smith didn’t make it to the inaugural, and it wasn’t because he didn’t have tickets. Unfortunately, he and his wife, Heidi, became victims of “The Purple Tunnel of Doom.”

The Third Street Tunnel became known as The Purple Tunnel of Doom because that’s where thousands of people with purple-coded inaugural tickets—and others with differently coded tickets who were sent there by police—were supposed to enter the event. Security problems and other snafus stranded those ticket-holders in the tunnel and forced them to miss the event.

“It got to the point where people were shouting ‘Yes we can!’ and ‘Let us in!’ recalled Smith, who said he waited five hours in the tunnel before giving up and heading back to his hotel. He watched the inauguration at a nearby restaurant, and still felt the excitement.

“The electricity in the city was most palpable,” he said.

That energy carried over to the Mid-Atlantic States Ball, one of 10 official balls held the night of the inauguration at the Washington Convention Center. Smith and Buffalo State Chapter President Richard Stempniak were at the black-tie event, which featured singer Wyclef Jean and a less-than-stellar performance by The Dead, according to Smith and Stempniak.

Smith and Stempniak said they saw the First Couple, who danced to “At Last” and left the ball shortly afterward.

For Stempniak, who met former President Bill Clinton at a luncheon for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and chatted with rappers Ludicrous and Bow Wow at his hotel, the ball was the culmination of a crazy week in Washington.

“It was an experience,” he said.

— Michael Lisi