Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 21, 1993 TAG: 9301210265
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE MOOD: HOPE, DOUBT, APATHY, JOY
AS BILL CLINTON was inaugurated president at noon Wednesday, many Western Virginians watched and listened - at home, at work and at play. Our reporters fanned out at noon Wednesday to see who was watching and what they thought of it.
"When I'm president, my husband will be the `first man,' " sniffed Jamie Branner, as she and her fifth-grade classmates plopped down in front of a television at G.W. Carver Elementary School in Salem.
"There she is," whispered Jennifer Jennings, pointing to Chelsea Clinton as a television camera zoomed in on her face. "I think she's really lucky to be living in the White House. She gets everything a girl could dream of."
When Chelsea yawned, the students laughed. When she rubbed her eyes, they noted how tired she must have been.
Natalie Cooper said she thought it was nice of George Bush to attend.
At the Roanoke Central YMCA, the parking lot was jammed, people were lined up to play basketball and the aerobics class was as crowded as ever - all without the presence of a TV set.
Sharon Daniels of Salem said she was there instead of watching the inauguration "because frankly, I don't care. I'd rather be here lifting weights. I need that more than I need the inauguration."
At Hollins College, six students watched one of the college's public television sets. The silent group leaned forward to hear Clinton and clapped as he finished speaking. Three students rushed in after the applause asking, "Did we miss it? Oh well."
At the Hokie House Restaurant in downtown Blacksburg, Clinton's inaugural address was forced to compete with country music on the jukebox. Clinton spoke of "reinventing America" as Clint Black sang "I'm leaving here a better man."
Interest at the restaurant was likewise divided between the new president's speech and the pool tables.
At least Hokie House owner George Willard watched Clinton on the big-screen TV with complete attention. Afterward, Willard said he supported Bush during the campaign but is a Clinton backer now.
Because of the speech?
"He's the president, that's why." Willard said. "I'm an American, that's why."
Ethel Haygood, 66, reflected on the time that she'd seen President Franklin Roosevelt in person during the dedication of the VA Medical Center in Salem.
To her, Clinton represents a break with the past.
"He seems more down-to-earth and with the little people," said Haygood, who runs the Disabled American Veterans Thrift Store on Shenandoah Avenue. "He's young, and I think he'll relate to young people."
In the back of the store, Betty Brown, 60, was riffling through a stack of discount pocketbooks.
"I'm kind of listening as I go through here," she said. "He looks just like those Kennedy boys. I just love him."
MaLarkys Tavern on Orange Avenue in Roanoke served an appropriately Southern buffet - hamburger steak, country-style green beans, scalloped potatoes - for the inauguration, even if not all eaters were happy about who was taking the oath.
"I love it," said Jim Bell, who drives a truck with a "No Bush" license and owns Automotive Machine Shop on Salem Avenue.
Bell's eating buddy, Mike Beckner of Beckner Import near Wirtz, was less enthusiastic about change. He held out a handful of coins and asked Bell:
"You want change? This is the only kind you'll get."
Philip Honig, eating with Bell and Beckner, said he is unemployed after being laid off from Industrial Tank and Supply, and he just hopes Clinton "can kick the economy in the butt."
At Roanoke's Plowshare Peace Center, Ricardo Valdivieso said he thought Clinton's speech was filled with empty rhetoric reminiscent of Bush's "Thousand Points of Light" speeches.
Valdivieso, a baker and freelance photographer who volunteers at Plowshare, said Clinton made no attempt to distance himself from abuses committed by "the Pentagon and the security forces" during the Bush and Reagan administrations.
"I didn't see a backbone in his speech," Valdivieso said. "His hands are tied by the Pentagon. They're telling the new administration: `We're in control. And you're not going to roll us back.' "
While Clinton spoke, business went on as usual in Martin's Pharmacy in downtown Pulaski. It was not until Maya Angelou began reading her poem that people stopped what they were doing and began giving their full attention to the color TV set up in the back of the store.
"That was better than his speech," said Ken Farmer, a Radford Realtor and the only person who had come in specifically to listen to Clinton.
"It gave me a feeling of hope," he said of Clinton's speech. Farmer also felt that Clinton having Angelou develop a poem for the inauguration said something about his character.
Virginia Tech's Squires Student Center, normally noisy with students exchanging gossip or homework assignments, was silent, save the echo of four television sets blaring Clinton's speech through the corridors.
"Look, there's Chelsea," someone whispered, pointing at the screen.
Every seat in the television lounge was filled, and behind the seats stood more students: black, white, Asian, long-haired, short-haired, decked out in T-shirts, oxfords or leather.
"Finally," said Rebecca Shelley, a freshman from Roanoke. "A young president. It's something different, something new."
The snapping of burning wood. The buzz of a circulator on the wood stove. The clacking of keys on an adding machine. From outside, the gentle drone of a motorboat cutting smoothly through the narrow, frigid channel of Smith Mountain Lake at Hardy Ford.
The leadership of the Free World changed hands without so much as a sound inside Bay Roc Marina in Franklin County, where not even a radio was tuned to the gaudy spectacle of democracy.
Pat Welch ("I didn't vote for Clinton. He has sneaky eyes.") was writing a check to a florist to pay for a bunch of Christmas flowers she'd bought.
Her husband, George Welch, was equally nonplussed: "It'll happen," he said, "whether I'm watching or not. I'll be trying to sell a boat."
And Doris Bloomer, working in a cubicle in the back of the shop at a desk awash in receipts and adding-machine tape, explained why she was too busy to deal with the federal transition: "It's tax time here."
Candi Cline, a sewing-machine operator at Maid Bess Corp. in Salem, enjoyed a special Vietnamese New Year luncheon in the company cafeteria without a thought to the changing of presidents. But almost 20 years after she left Vietnam for a new home in the United States, she had an opinion:
"I like the old one [Bush] better because he made peace with China and he's smart," she said. Of President Clinton, she said, "He made promises and now we'll wait and see what he does. I can't judge him."
Nannie Layne, three months shy of 100, watched the inauguration in her sunny room at Avante nursing home in Old Southwest Roanoke.
She was 8 when President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. "I remember my mother and a friend of hers talking about it, and I didn't know what the word `assassination' meant," Layne said.
Layne's grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren are doctors, bankers, prosperous people. One of her great-granddaughters, a graduate student in journalism in Washington, was at the inaugural events, somewhere there in the scenes Nannie Layne gazed into on television.
At the All-Rite Laundry Center in Northwest Roanoke, nine people folded stacks of jockey shorts, washcloths and pajamas as Clinton appeared on two small black-and-white TV sets high in the laundry wall. Few people even glanced at them.
Mary Hancock, 38, in there doing her wash, is pleased with the new president. "He's better than Bush was. He's for the poor peoples, and we need jobs, and we need more money, medication, more hospitalization for people who don't got it."
These staff writers contributed to this story: Mary Bishop, Ron Brown, Paul Dellinger, Mike Hudson, George Kegley, Sandra Brown Kelly, Kevin Kittredge, Kathy Loan, Jessica Martin, Mag Poff, Madelyn Rosenberg, Ed Shamy, Diane Simpson, Leslie Taylor and Joel Turner.