BY MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

Johnnie Taylor shook her head, raised her arms and mouthed a silent prayer as the band struck up “Hail to the Chief” for President Barack Obama.

Taylor, 60, recalled her youth as a civil-rights activist who was yanked from a lunch-counter stool during a Woolworth’s sit in. The conflict resolution trainer at the Richmond Peace Education Center sees Obama’s presidency as the product of divine intervention.

“When things like this happen, it’s not by accident. It’s not by history. It’s an ordained event,” she said. “I know man had to vote, but God made this happen.”

Kayla Hill-Jones was born a half-century after Taylor, but bore a psychic load no less onerous. For the Glen Allen Elementary School fourth-grader, yesterday meant this: “That I can accomplish anything, even though I’m black.”

Taylor and Kayla were among three dozen people who watched Obama’s inauguration at Highland Park’s Fire House 15 as they washed down chili, cornbread, tossed salad and brownies with sweet iced tea. The fire station-turned-eatery is run by Boaz & Ruth, a nonprofit that seeks to transform Highland Park, serve as a community bridge and rebuild the lives of formerly incarcerated men and women.

As I listened to a 10-year-old child describe her brave new world, it brought to mind the old one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Upon telling his young daughter that the Atlanta amusement park Funtown was closed to black children, he could see “ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky.”

Those clouds have hovered over the collective mental sky of African-Americans throughout the nation’s history.

Yesterday, the skies cleared.

The forecast for America is another matter. The nation’s helm has been handed to an African-American during one of the most turbulent times in our nation’s history.

Adria Scharf, director of the Richmond Peace Education Center, described yesterday as “disorienting,” and indeed, there was a magical aura that bordered on surreal. You might say the country has found its bearings after straying wildly off course from the grand ideals charted in its founding.

The journey toward that ideal is far from complete. But perhaps for the first time, many of us understand how King felt in the famous speech that foreshadowed his death. Like him, we don’t know what will happen now. There are difficult days ahead. But that doesn’t matter as much anymore. We’ve been to the mountaintop.

“I’m 50,” said Ruth Cosby, a Boaz & Ruth graduate who supervises its furniture store at Third and Main streets. “I thought I would never see this. I just couldn’t stop crying. I think this is going to unite us as a country, and we’re going to realize Dr. King’s dream.”

If that’s the case, it’s children such as Kayla who stand to inherit a nobler nation.

Kayla’s parents, Stan Jones and Regina Hill, are supporters of Boaz & Ruth. “We wanted her to experience giving instead of receiving — of serving others,” her mother said of Kayla.

Kayla wore a red and blue T-shirt that featured a portrait of the new first family inside the presidential seal.

“She said she wanted to be the first African-American president,” her mother said, chuckling. “I told her she could be the first woman.”

North Carolina leaders and supporters of President Barack Obama spoke of racial progress and high expectations Tuesday as they watched him make history by taking the oath of office.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq will be on the agenda Wednesday when the new commander in chief meets with top national security aides and senior commanders, officials said.

Obama was summoning his holdover defense secretary, Robert Gates, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to the White House, along with other members of his National Security Council, to discuss a way ahead in the war, according to two senior military officers.

The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House had not publicly announced the meeting.

The war in Afghanistan also was to be discussed, with the commander overseeing both conflicts, Gen. David Petraeus, scheduled to attend.

Also scheduled to participate via videoteleconference were Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander in Afghanistan, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq.

During his campaign, Obama said he intended to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months, although it was not clear Tuesday whether the president would issue a hard-and-fast order Wednesday to end the war on that specific timeline or declare his intentions in more general terms.

In his inaugural address Tuesday, Obama said he would “begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” though he offered no details about his plan for either war.

Petraeus is in the midst of a broad and deep review of his entire region of responsibility, which encompasses Iraq and the rest of the Middle East as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of Central Asia.

With the inclusion of Petraeus, Odierno and McKiernan, the meeting Wednesday appeared to reflect, at least in part, Gates’ preference for offering the president a full range of views — from senior civilians as well as top military commanders — at key junctures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military service chiefs, with whom Obama would be expected to consult at some point, were not expected to attend Wednesday’s session.

Ben McNeely

I stood next to Joyce Miller, a teacher from Texas, and her family in a giant crowd that was waiting to get through the Indiana Avenue checkpoint to the Mall. It was behind the National Archives Building and security was checking everyone, one-by-one.

It was obvious we would not get to the Mall before Obama took the oath of office. Luckily, Miller and her friend were listening to the ceremony through earbuds connected to a radio.

When Vice President Joe Biden took the oath of office, she called out, “Joe Biden is in!”

Then Obama took the oath and she declared, “They are presenting the 44th president, Barack Obama!”

Joyce Miller, an African-American woman, started reciting Obama’s speech as she heard it from the radio.

We all gathered around her and I recorded the entire speech as she recited it.

Miller was in strong voice and reflected Obama’s tone and inflection in her voice. When he got loud, she got loud. When the crowd applauded, she would say, “Applause, applause.”

Miller would pause to hear what Obama was saying and the crowd hung on her every word — exciting and hungry for the next part of the speech.

Overhead, the sound coming from the huge speakers on the Mall reverberated on the buildings around us.

When the speech was over, Miller yelled, “Thank you. God bless you and God bless America!” The crowd cheered. There are smiles. There were tears. There was applause.

The checkpoint opened up again and folks milled toward the gate again.

Even though we weren’t on the Mall and never saw Obama, this was the story behind the story — Americans that came far and wide to be this close to the inauguration, only to be stopped by security.

They heard the words of the nation’s first African-American president through an African-American woman.

Truly a moving experience.

Ben McNeely is a reporter with the Concord/Kannapolis Independent Tribune. The Independent Tribune is a Media General publication.

WASHINGTONKennedy taken from luncheon with Obama — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, ill with a brain tumor, was hospitalized Tuesday but quickly reported feeling well after suffering a seizure at a post-inauguration luncheon for President Barack Obama.

“After testing, we believe the incident was brought on by simple fatigue,” Dr. Edward Aulisi, chairman of neurosurgery at Washington Hospital Center said in a statement released by the senator’s office.

“He will remain … overnight for observation, and will be released in the morning.”

The statement said the 76-year-old senator “is awake, talking with family and friends, and feeling well.”

The statement did not disclose the tests that were performed on Kennedy, whose seizure was witnessed by several fellow senators seated with him at lunch.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told reporters he and Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, grabbed the senator as he became ill.

Added Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., “It took a lot out of him. Seizures are exhausting.”

Even so, Dodd quoted Kennedy as saying, “I’ll be OK, I’ll see you later” as he was put into an ambulance.

“The good news is he’s gonna be fine,” Dodd added.

Kennedy had appeared in good health and spirits a few hours earlier when he stepped out of the Capitol and onto the inauguration platform where Obama took the oath of office. His endorsement of the former Illinois senator had come at a pivotal point in the Democratic presidential race, and the older man campaigned energetically for the younger one.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told reporters that Obama noticed when Kennedy became ill, and rushed over to his table.

“There was a call for silence throughout the room,” he said. “The president went over immediately. The lights went down, just to reduce the heat, I think.”

In his remarks, Obama said his prayers were with the stricken senator, his family and wife.

“He was there when the Voting Rights Act passed, along with John Lewis, who was a warrior for justice,” the newly inaugurated president said.

“And so I would be lying to you if I did not say that right now a part of me is with him. And I think that’s true for all of us,” Obama said.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 91, also left the luncheon early, but his office and others said his health was not the reason.

Byrd “is currently in his own office … and is doing fine, though he remains very concerned about his close friend, Ted Kennedy,” said Mark Ferrell, a spokesman for the West Virginia Democrat.

Kennedy was diagnosed last May with a particularly aggressive type of brain tumor, called a malignant glioma, after suffering a seizure at his Massachusetts home. He had what his doctor described as successful surgery to remove as much as possible of the tumor in his left parietal lobe. Kennedy then underwent radiation and chemotherapy, necessary because doctors know that even if they remove all of the visible tumor, stray cells almost certainly remain.

One doctor not connected with the senator’s care said it’s not unusual for patients recovering from brain tumors to suffer seizures.

If so, “it does not necessarily mean the tumor’s growing back,” said Dr. Matthew Ewend, neurosurgery chief at the University of North Carolina, noting that Kennedy already would have been receiving MRI scans of his brain every few months to check for that possibility.

Patients recovering from a brain tumor almost always are prescribed anti-seizure drugs, and something as common as a change in schedule could cause a dip in blood levels of that medication and produce a seizure, he said. Fatigue could also cause illness.

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Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Andrew Miga, Lolita C. Baldor and Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — History surely will remember President Barack Obama as the first black to sit in the White House. But success in his term will depend on his accomplishments rather than on the color of his skin.

He takes office with friendlier majorities in Congress than any chief executive since Lyndon Johnson and confronts economic challenges unrivaled since the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Rising unemployment, a crippled financial lending system, millions without health care and an economy dangerously dependent on foreign oil top the agenda at home. Two wars — one he has vowed to end, the other to wage — confront him overseas.

More fundamentally, he told the country Tuesday in his inaugural address, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

Partially because of America’s tortured racial history, Obama’s inauguration sparked enormous excitement, and he begins his presidency with a larger reservoir of goodwill than might otherwise be the case. A vast crowd that began filling the National Mall before daybreak on Tuesday was evidence of that, a final comeuppance to those who doubted a black could gain the White House.

But like the new president and his aides, even those who stood with Martin Luther King Jr., and then preceded Obama into politics understand that will not be enough.

“This is a victory for democracy, for all Americans who see their hopes and dreams in Barack Obama, who now feel that they have a voice,” Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, said in an Inauguration Day statement.

“But after the Inaugural celebration ends, I caution the American people to have patience. We face many great challenges that took more than 100 days to create, and will take more than 100 days to rectify,” added the South Carolina Democrat, who recalled first meeting King in 1960.

Obama, 47, projects a Rooseveltian optimism about the future.

Despite eroded national confidence, he said in his speech, “Our capacity remain undiminished.” He urged the nation to choose “hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

The Democratic majorities in Congress are jubilant about the prospect of an Obama presidency, a welcome change for them after the past two years spent struggling with President George W. Bush. He won most of the big political battles, but they won last November’s elections, gaining seats in both the House and Senate.

“So we are ready. Democrats have arrived,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference two days after the new Congress convened. “We are ready to lead, prepared to govern.”

Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democrats are moving quickly to implement Obama’s economic recovery plan. Even before he took office, he won the release of the second half of the $700 billion financial industry bailout that passed Congress last fall. An $825 billion economic stimulus bill is making its way to his desk, with an estimated delivery time of mid-February.

Not surprisingly, congressional Democrats leave their own stamp on the measure, a process to be repeated over and over in the president’s term. That reflects a healthy tension between two branches of government, but is not to be confused with opposition.

Republicans face the first of many decisions as they settle into their new role.

In the Senate, talk of bill-killing filibusters is scarce so far. The GOP now holds only 41 of the 100 seats, with the Minnesota election yet to be settled.

In the House as well as in the Senate, Republicans in safe seats will feel relatively free to oppose the new president. Others will be more inclined to support his program.

Obama’s stated goal as he takes office is to expand the latter group as much as possible.

His pre-presidential days have been marked by calls for bipartisanship, backed up by decisions such as retaining Defense Secretary Robert Gates in office and smaller grace notes he hopes the public and Republicans will notice.

He quietly made it known he was prepared to attend the closed-door weekly lunch held by GOP senators on the same day as last’s week’s meeting with Democrats. He was asked to wait until after the inauguration.

On his final night before moving into the office, Obama attended a dinner in honor of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, his opponent in last fall’s campaign. Pursuing a common purpose rather than political advantage “is built into the very content of his character,” Obama said of the man he ran against.

There was an echo of King in that. In the most famous speech of his life, the civil rights leader said a generation ago he hoped his own children could be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In his inaugural speech, Obama referred to his heritage as “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant …”

But President Obama’s horizon is far broader than that.

“That we are in the midst of a crisis is now well understood,” he said.

WASHINGTON — With one last handshake with President Barack Obama, George W. Bush boarded a helicopter on Tuesday at the Capitol and began his post-presidential life, closing a two-term administration marked by war, recession and the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Vice President Joe Biden gave Bush a brief salute as the chopper left the Capitol grounds and headed to Andrews Air Force Base, flying over the throngs of supporters who came to Washington for the historic inauguration of the 44th president.

The unpopular incumbent and Obama, who has ascended to rock-star status even as he faces daunting and international challenges, stood with their wives on the Capitol steps smiling and laughing. If there were any hard feelings between the incoming Democrat and outgoing Republican, they weren’t apparent in the Bush send-off at the base of the helicopter. The two men hugged and clasped hands one final time, sealing the transfer of power.

Bush actually began the first few minutes as an ex-president listening to a musical prelude at the swearing-in ceremony. Obama had not yet taken the oath of office, but while the musicians played, he became president at 12 noon EST, according to the Constitution.

Some in the crowd, weary of Bush’s eight years in office, booed the president when the large viewing screens near the World War II Memorial flashed an image of the exiting president arriving at the swearing-in. Moments later, rounds of cheers welled up as the same screens showed the incoming first lady, Michelle Obama, and her two daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Unfazed by his unpopularity, Bush smiled and waved throughout the day’s activities. He blew a kiss out the window of his limousine as he left the White House with Obama.

After the inauguration ceremony, some in the crowd waved at the aircraft in the sky. Others, however, cheered when they heard a television broadcaster announce, “George Bush is no longer president of the United States.” Still others in the crowd, broke into chants of “Na-na-na-nah, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”

Earlier in the day, a cheerful Bush and his wife, Laura, hosted Obama and his wife, Biden and his wife, Jill, and lawmakers for coffee in the Blue Room of the White House.

Keeping with a White House ritual, Bush left a note for Obama in his desk in the Oval Office, wishing him well as he takes the reins of power.

“I won’t provide any details, but the theme is similar to what he’s said since election night about the fabulous new chapter President-elect Obama is about to start, and that he wishes him the very best,” outgoing White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

She said the two-term Republican incumbent wrote the message to his Democratic successor on Monday and left it in the top drawer of his desk, which was crafted from timbers from the H.M.S. Resolute and given to the U.S. by Great Britain in 1879.

Bush was in the office before 7 a.m. EST. He spoke on the phone with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, former White House chief of staff Andy Card and T.D. Jakes, the pastor of a megachurch in Dallas who will preach at a private church service that Obama is attending before the Inauguration. Bush took one last stroll around the south grounds of the White House.

Perino said the president’s mood was upbeat. “He’s the president of the United States, the way he always is. He hasn’t changed. He gave me a big kiss on the forehead,” she said.

At Andrews, Bush quickly disappeared into a hangar for a private farewell speech to scores of former White House aides and supporters. Among them were former political adviser Karl Rove, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. Bush emerged about a half-hour later and boarded the familiar blue-and-white presidential aircraft, which was called Special Air Mission 28000 instead of Air Force One since he no longer was president.

The plane took off about 2 p.m. EST for Midland, Texas, where thousands of well-wishers are expected to greet Bush and his family at Centennial Plaza. It’s the same place that Bush stopped on his way to the nation’s capital for his own inauguration in 2001. While Bush was born in New Haven, Conn., he spent his childhood in Midland. He returned there as an adult in the 1970s and met the future first lady.

After the Midland rally, the Bushes are flying to Waco, Texas, on their way to their 1,600-acre ranch in nearby Crawford.

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Associated Press writers Liz Sidoti, Pam Hess, Matt Barakat, Jennifer Kerr and Mark Sherman contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled slightly over the 35-word constitutionally prescribed oath of office as he swore in Barack Obama as the 44th president on Tuesday, sending the new chief executive into a verbal detour of his own.

“Are you prepared to take the oath, Senator,” Roberts asked Obama, who was holding the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used the day he became president in 1861.

The swearing in began simply enough as Roberts started reciting the oath Obama was to repeat, a few words at a time.

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“I Barack Hussein Obama,” began Roberts.

“I Barack,” said Obama, and before he could continue, Roberts said, “do solemnly swear.”

Obama: “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear”

Roberts: “That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully…

Obama: “that I will execute…”

Roberts: “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States…”

Obama: “The office of president of the United States faithfully…”

At that point, Roberts got back on course, leading as Obama followed with “and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“So help you God?” asked Roberts.

“So help me God.”

By tradition, the presidential oath is administered by the chief justice, and in Roberts’ case, it was his first inauguration.

Later, as he and Obama chatted briefly before lunch in the Capitol, Roberts appeared to take responsibility for the error.

Roberts hosted Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at the high court last week in a social call, and the swearing in was one of the first of what could be many important interactions between the heads of two branches of government who rose to their positions of power quickly and who have some background similarities, but whose politics differ.

The affable Roberts and his conservative-leaning Supreme Court could have much to say in the years to come about Obama’s most important policy choices.

Former President George W. Bush left the court with two relatively young and reliably conservative voices, those of Roberts, 53, and Justice Samuel Alito, 58. Roberts took his seat in 2005 and Alito joined him the next year.

Roberts is the youngest chief justice in more than 200 years. He easily could still be in his role a quarter century from now, long after Obama has left office.

He and Obama are similar in many ways. Both are late baby boomers. Roberts is 53, Obama 47. And both got their law degrees from Harvard and made rapid ascents to power. But their politics diverge sharply.

Roberts was an official in Republican administrations before becoming an appeals court judge and then chief justice under Bush.

Obama was one of 22 Senate Democrats to vote against Roberts’ confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005 — the first time a Supreme Court justice has sworn in a president who voted against him.

As president, Obama will try to use any Supreme Court vacancies to counter Roberts’ influence, either by replacing aging liberals with justices as young as or younger than Roberts or by changing the court’s balance if a conservative justice retires unexpectedly.

Roberts added the words “so help me God” to the end of the constitutional oath, following a practice established by George Washington and followed by most presidents. And Obama repeated the phrase.

The last time a chief justice swore in a president of a different party was in 1997, when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a Republican, swore in Democrat Bill Clinton for a second term. Two years later, Rehnquist would preside over Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate which resulted in an acquittal.

Obama didn’t actually finish taking the oath until 12:05 p.m., five minutes after he actually became president under the Constitution. Clinton, in his first inauguration in 2001, also was five minutes late in taking the oath.

The Lincoln Bible used by Obama was on loan from the Library of Congress.

WASHINGTON — The National Mall pulsed with celebration and history Tuesday as a vast, excited crowd bore witness to a transfer of power like none other.

Energized by Barack Obama’s moment, hundreds of thousands of people, likely to end up at more than 1 million, clogged the scene, cheering the dignitaries as they filed onto the inaugural stand at the Capitol. Obama walked quietly and with the merest stirring of a smile through the halls to his position on the stand and his place in history as the first black president.

The crowd erupted in jubilation as he strode out.

Trumpets blared. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the latter walking haltingly with a cane, embraced.

Enduring below-freezing temperatures for hours, people streamed from subway stations and thronged past parked buses, emergency vehicles and street vendors to Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall for the inauguration. Ticket holders approaching the inaugural site filed through security sweeps in lines coiled like cinnamon rolls.

The shattering of racial barriers with the inauguration of the first black president lent a deeply personal dimension for many in the crowd as well as a historical landmark for all.

“I’ve been real emotional all morning thinking about my grandmother and the heroes whose shoulders we stand on,” said Lyshundria Houston, 34, here from Memphis, Tenn., after more than 20 hours of travel. Houston, who is black, said: “They’d be so proud.”

Coming from the city where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she reflected on the civil rights movement on her way to the parade, and said: “Sometimes that makes the cold go away.”

At the Capitol, a plexiglass shield extended about two feet up from the balustrade around the speaker’s platform. Muhammad Ali took his seat on the platform, as did actor John Cusack and director Stephen Spielberg. A huge cheer rose from the Mall as the image of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy flashed on jumbo TV screens showing the veteran Massachusetts Democrat, who is fighting brain cancer, heading toward his seat on the inauguration stand.

The district fire department responded to dozens of calls from people falling down or complaining of the being cold, D.C. fire and EMS department spokesman Alan Etter said. About two dozen were hospitalized.

Etter said medical personnel were having trouble getting to people quickly around the mall because of the throngs of people, but he added that everyone who needed help has eventually received treatment.

“Obviously the crush of people downtown is making it very challenging,” Etter said. “We’re doing the best we can.”

By 4 a.m., lines of riders had already formed in suburban parking lots for the Metro transit system, which opened early and put on extra trains for the expected rush. Many parking lots filled up and had to be closed.

Streets around the Capitol quickly filled with people, and security checkpoints were mobbed. The cold registered at a frosty 25 degrees Fahrenheit at late morning.

Warming tents and other facilities on the Mall were late opening because traffic and crowds delayed staffers from reaching them. At one spot, 150 people waited to buy a cup of coffee.

At the Capitol, a plexiglass shield extended about two feet up from the balustrade around the speaker’s platform. Near the lectern were seats reserved for Elie Wiesel and Martin Luther King III. Other seats were saved for past presidents, vice presidents and their spouses — the Clintons, the Gores, the Bushes and the Quayles. Each seat was furnished with a dark blue fleece blanket.

A flea-market atmosphere prevailed on downtown streets, with white tents set up to sell Obama T-shirts and mugs as well as food, bottled water, snacks, scarves and footwarmers. The scent of grilled sausages and steaming Chinese food greeted those who walked toward the parade route, more than six hours before Obama would pass by.

As the first waves of people began moving through security screenings, they scrambled for prime viewing spots along Pennsylvania Avenue — sitting on the curb, staking out plots of grass, or clambering on to cold metal benches.

Real estate appraiser Denise Grandberry of St. Louis stood on the mall with her niece Murphy and daughter Nikki and talked about all the foreclosed homes she’s seen in her work. “I’ve seen the remnants of peoples’ lives,” she said. “I have hope now and I think the nation has hope.”

Some 410,000 people had entered Washington’s Metro transit system by 9 a.m., an extraordinary number, transit officials said. “God Bless them, they came out in this weather,” said Robyn Ahlstrom, a volunteer with the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Medical personnel struggled because of the crush of the crowd. One officer, with a patient he described as having had a seizure, tried to find out when an ambulance would arrive and couldn’t. “She’s been here nearly an hour,” the officer radioed. “She really needs to get to the hospital.”

The joyous mood of many was tempered for some by delays and dashed expectations.

Alice Williams, a 51-year-old teacher of gifted children from Kansas City, Mo., had the coveted purple ticket that would place her in front of the Capitol, but got caught in the crowd bottleneck and was stuck a half mile away.

“We got blocked off; there was too much traffic and no guidance,” she said forlornly. “I’ve been walking for an hour and a half. All I want to do is see my president sworn in.”

The cold was also taking its toll.

Shelton Iddeen, 57, of Greensboro, N.C., arrived at the Mall at 4 a.m. and huddled in front of an ambulance to warm up.

“My hands feel really bad; you can’t feel your toes,” he said. “I’m more concerned about other people, the elderly and the young. I’ve seen a lot of people here really suffering.”

Others were unfazed.

Faosat Idowu of Lagos, Nigeria, had tickets for the inauguration but couldn’t get through the crowds at five different entrances between the White House and Capitol Hill. She ended up walking in a highway tunnel that normally carries Interstate 395 under the Capitol grounds, closed for this one day to all but pedestrians. She wore a bright red scarf and hat adorned with dozens of green patches bearing Obama’s face and the words, “Africans for Obama.”

“It’s part of the excitement,” Idowu said. “I don’t mind it at all.”

Onjali Bodrul flew from London to see a man whose career she and her friends have followed since she was a political science student at Oxford four years ago. “He’s the first man in politics in a long time we don’t hate,” she said. “It’s like a football match, it’s so exciting.”

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Associated Press Writers Donna Cassata, Kevin Freking, Ann Sanner, Troy Thibodeaux, Ken Thomas, Gillian Gaynair, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Ed Tobias, Ben Evans, Seth Borenstein and H. Josef Hebert contributed to this report.