Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 18, 1993 TAG: 9301180062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and The Associated Pres
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
CLINTON ARRIVES, WITH A CALL FOR UNITY
Promising change and calling for national unity, President-elect Bill Clinton swept into Washington on Sunday, leading a triumphal procession at the beginning of a five-day inaugural celebration rich in political symbolism and entertainment.Clinton, greeted by a Washington throng of 300,000 after a horn-tooting bus tour from Thomas Jefferson's home near Charlottesville, Va., sounded his themes throughout the day.
And it was spelled out across the dark evening sky over Washington as a huge fireworks display climaxed with the word "HOPE" glowing brightly, if briefly.
Standing at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday afternoon, Clinton said: "In this world and the world of tomorrow we must go forward together or not at all. My fellow Americans, I ask you tonight to reach out beyond the forces that divide us. In the difficult days ahead, we must reach beyond those forces.
"Let us build an American home for the 21st century where everyone has a place at the table, and no single child is left behind."
He picked up on a phrase from Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861, saying: "Our American reunion is about `the better angels of our nature.' May they govern all of us in the days ahead."
"Let us build an American home for the 21st century where everyone has a place at the table and not a single child is left behind."
The scene was dramatically illuminated by flashlights held by many in the huge audience.
Gore said, "This is a time for healing and unity before we lay our hands on the hard work to be done."
At Monticello, Clinton had said, "I want to be faithful to Jefferson's idea that about once in a generation, you have to shake things up and face your problems."
The Clinton team planned the trip to Monticello to celebrate a president who was both a leading philosopher of democracy and the father of the Democratic Party, which Clinton now heads.
The trip was "a way of saying to Americans: `We want you to be in control. We don't want to be out of touch with you,' " Clinton said.
The president-elect and Vice President-elect Al Gore roughly retraced the route that Jefferson took to his 1801 inaugural. They arrived in Washington at 2:45 p.m. to attend a concert and deliver remarks at the Lincoln Memorial.
Then they crossed the Potomac River on the Memorial Bridge - built to symbolize the reunion of North and South after the Civil War - to lead a bell-ringing ceremony at the Lady Bird Johnson Circle near Arlington Cemetery, symbolic of Clinton's message of national reconciliation.
At the stroke of 6 p.m., Clinton and Gore grasped a red rope attached to a replica of the Liberty Bell. Across the country, and aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, bells rang out simultaneously. Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, kept up the ringing long after her father let go of the rope.