Jeffrey Richard, ACC Board Chair

Reflections on the 57^th Presidential Inauguration

January 21, 2013

U. S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.

by Hon. Jeffrey K. Richard, MPP

Board Chair, Austin Community College District

I rose at 4 a.m. to catch a ride to the subway, to transfer to the red line and Union Station, to walk 10 blocks, and to go through the heated security tents at the Blue Gate. When I arrived in my assigned section, there was my friend, the Rev. Jack Gause, Pastor of Austin’s St. Peter’s United Methodist Church, sitting at the front of our section. He was the very first to arrive. That was the plan.

Then I saw them. The famed Tuskegee Airmen, most of whom are now in their 90s, sat in a long row of wheel chairs with quiet dignity, tended by family and military personnel. These men and women were without a single complaint, in 20-degree weather on the west side of the Capitol, comforted by standard-issue green military blankets, most of which were barely unfolded, as if to say, “We can surely handle this!”

Former President Bill Clinton was walking in the hallway leading out to the public portico, with Secretary of State and former Senator Hillary Clinton, who has been suffering from health concerns lately. And for that brief moment, an uncharacteristically somber Bill Clinton looked to me like a caring husband who was just trying to help his wife navigate the narrow, ancient marble steps of the Capitol.

The Oath of Office, administered first for the vice president and then for the president, is just 35 simple words. President Barack Obama said that the oath he had just pledged is “not so different” from the oath that our military personnel pledge. The day seemed to embody what we strive to become in approaching the American ideal. In one word, it is: Better.

After the ceremonies concluded and I was walking back to visit a few congressional offices, as if in final benediction to a historic day, I came upon Benjamin Todd Jealous, head of the NAACP, and Michele Moore, spouse of Marc Morial, who leads the National Urban League – two of the nation’s oldest civil rights and social justice organizations, and I am a Lifetime Member in both – along with two beautiful young children. I remember thinking that those two young children, neither probably more than nine years old, would grow up the rest of their lives with this memory. They saw the world’s most powerful person, and he looked just like they did. And for them, such an achievement was a normal and even reasonable expectation. A day like this day really could nourish an unshakeable faith in “the possible.”

The ACC Jazz Ensemble also took part in inaugural festivities, playing at the Texas State Society’s Black Tie and Boots Inaugural Ball. Read more in the ACC Newsroom.