A Ball on the Mall
Guest commentary from Mark W. Stevens, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania eHealth Initiative and Advocacy Co-Chair of the Delaware Valley chapter of HIMSS
A Dad Takes His Daughter to D.C. to Witness History
On Tuesday, January 20th at 3:45 a.m., we boarded a chartered bus from West Chester, Pa., to Washington, D.C.
My 12 year-old daughter, Morgan, is a big Obama fan (as is the rest of her family for that matter), so I had purchased bus tickets to the Inauguration as a Christmas present as soon as they became available from our county Democratic committee. When we arrived in Washington, it was 7 a.m., 20F degrees and windy. I had lived in D.C. for two years after college, working as a doorkeeper (i.e., tour guide) in the Senate and as a gofer at a lobbying firm, and had never experienced that kind of cold there before, all the while thinking that we were going to be outside until at least 5 p.m.
As a parent, I've learned firsthand the truth of the adage "90 percent of life is showing up", and have tried to be there for my girls' "big moments," but I didn't expect tears to well up when I got to the Mall (I said it was due to the wind). The crowds, the monuments, the beauty and awe of the moment were overwhelming. There were entire families camped out in the cold. Goodwill and joy were evident everywhere (I learned later that there was not one recorded arrest connected to the Inauguration festivities - this with an estimated crowd of 1.8 million), as was the sense of history being made...
We watched the ceremony on a jumbo-tron TV at the front of the Smithsonian. People around us sang, cheered and waved flags (over 1 million were handed out free of charge). For "W," many booed...
We did a lot of people-watching, and took some fun pictures (before the camera died - my daughter had remembered to charge her cellphone, though!) I was thinking about the health care IT stimulus package, and would it make the difference we all hoped for, when we bumped into Chris Matthews (host of MSNBC's "Hardball"), who popped out of a media trailer we happened to walked by. My daughter remarked that she had no idea she would see "celebrities" at the Inauguration (I told her there were probably more movie stars in Washington, D.C., that day than were in all of Hollywood). Following the swearing-in ceremony, we made the long, circuitous trek back to the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue (walking past many of the 5,000 portapotties in town for the day - apparently the largest such assemblage ever). Against all odds, we wanted to get a glimpse of the new President and First Lady, and were just able to see their limo when a nice couple approached us and gave us their VIP-access tickets so that we could get a more close-up look, and remarking how nice it was to see a Dad and his daughter together.
I couldn't have agreed more.
Photo credit: Morgan Stevens