Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994 TAG: 9401160119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DALE EISMAN and GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Mink coats sat alongside goose down parkas. Women wearing killer diamonds covered them with two sets of gloves and pulled scarves over their $200 hairdos.
Ex-Gov. Linwood Holton forgot the dignity of senior statesmanship and pulled his Redskins ski cap down so far it almost covered his eyes. Ex-Congressman Caldwell Butler of Roanoke wore a hunting cap with the flaps down over his ears.
But these Republicans and the couple of thousand others who saluted George Felix Allen on his big day had waited 16 years to celebrate and damn if they were going to let a little chill keep them away.
Eggs, God and $37,500 launched Allen on his Big Day.
Fifteen hundred people crammed the Inaugural Prayer Breakfast - at $25 a head - to watch Allen eat and to listen to a motivational speaker from Texas lay a historical foundation for putting more prayer into schools and government.
"Prayer and government have always gone together well in America," said David Barton in his copyrighted, 13-page Election Sermon. Barton blazed through the text, complete with slides of Founding Fathers and scripture verses, in less than 45 minutes.
Barton is a former public school principal who now home-schools his children. He is president of a group called WallBuilders Inc., which lobbies for putting prayer in schools.
He drew intense applause from an audience that included Virginia Beach religious broadcaster M.G. "Pat" Robertson, former GOP lieutenant governor candidate Michael Farris and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in this year's U.S. Senate race.
Society is controlled in only two ways, Barton said: by religion or by bayonets. He quoted George Washington: "The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained."
Allen, who was cautious about embracing the Christian right during the campaign, welcomed Barton's remarks with a standing ovation.
"We're excited," said Betsy Mock, a mother of three (she left them home and warm on Saturday) who grinned through her shivers as she sat near the top of a section of bleachers about an hour before Allen was sworn in.
Mock, who teaches kindergarten in the Richmond area, said she supported Allen enthusiastically during the campaign but didn't meet him until a Thursday night hoedown that was part of the inaugural celebration. She came to the swearing-in, she said, hopeful that Allen can kindle in Virginia the confidence and prosperity she believes Ronald Reagan brought to the nation in the 1980s.
"The misconception of the 1980s is that it was greedy time," she said. "It was a growth time."
Mock is among thousands of conservative Christians who were energized by Allen's campaign and by that of Farris, the only unsuccessful statewide GOP candidate last fall. An ardent opponent of legal abortion, she was "very dismayed at how it was portrayed in the media as radical to be a Christian" during that campaign, she said.
Now, Mock hopes Allen can get state government more focused on its most important job: "to keep people from hurting one another."
Looking, well, collegiate in ball caps and stadium coats, members of the College Republicans from all over Virginia descended on the inauguration with red-cheeked enthusiasm.
"We think there's more to come," said Andrew Testwuide, a College of William and Mary sophomore from Virginia Beach. "More Republicans are going to be elected in the next 12 years than in the last 12 years."
Just what lures young people to the Grand Old Party, anyway?
"The big things on our campus are political correctness, speech codes and liberal bias. That turns people off on the college level," Testwuide said.
As he was being thoughtful and polite - "Yes, sir," Testwuide kept saying - several William and Mary buddies bounded up with a little more youthful verve.
"George is going to make it warm out here!" gushed Wes Eargle, a junior.
And how would he do that?
Said sophomore Akram Khan: "He's going to put Susan out there."
Standing in front of a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Ann Zigler of Martinsville and three friends stood out in Saturday's crowd; they're black.
"I like what he stands for. I like his character. I like the man," said Zigler, who said she comes to Richmond every four years to welcome the new governor.
One of her friends - "I don't want to give you my name because of what I do," she said - suggested that more African-Americans than is commonly suspected support Allen.
"We're looking for a chance to be self sufficient," she said, "to be empowered as individuals and as a people. We've always had an excellent work ethic, though that's not always been the appearance, that's not always been what people have promoted about us as a people. But we have always had that. We had very thriving business districts before integration and we bought into some of the myths about integration . . .
"I think we've got enough problems now. I think we know that what we've done for the last 30 years hasn't worked. And we're about turning around, revisiting the values that kept us together as a people through slavery, through Jim Crowism and through segregation, and to instill those values once again in our people, especially our young people."
> Conspicuous fashion statement at the inauguration: fur coats.
Susan Allen made a point of wearing her mink, even though staff members said earlier in the week that she might wear a cloth coat to avoid a flap by animal rights advocates.
Plenty of other women were proud to follow the first lady's lead.
"I'm wearing my full-length mink coat because I was cold and I used good common sense," said Doris Jewell, who is such an ardent Republican that she braved the event even though she lives in Silver Spring, Md.
After a moment's thought, Jewell decided weather wasn't the only reason she put on the pelts: "I do not believe in political correctness," she said.
Plenty of Virginia politicians with "former" in their titles made the scene Saturday.
"I'm excited to be here," said former Republican U.S. Sen. Paul Trible, a failed candidate for governor in 1989. "It's great to win. There's nothing that causes more enthusiasm and good will than a political victory. The Republican Party has not been as united and as committed to action in years as it is today."
For former Gov. Gerald Baliles, a Democrat who saw his administration's attorney general [Mary Sue Terry] go down in flames to Allen, the occasion held less spark.
"I am impressed," Baliles said, "with the coldness of the day."
The hardiest souls in the inaugural crowd watched from the north side of the Capitol, on big screen television sets set up for that purpose. They saw Allen sworn in, but that was all because the local NBC affiliate they were watching cut away from Allen's speech to show the Los Angeles Raiders-Buffalo Bills game. One of those hardy souls, Henry Watson of Henrico County, was there because "I've got a son in the Virginia Tech corps of cadets for the parade. I came down because he had to be here and I had to get him here."
Watson described himself as a political independent - "I'm not a supporter of any of 'em as long as they're collecting taxes," he said. And he had perhaps the day's best description of the weather that seemed to be on everyone's mind:
"I haven't been this cold in a goose blind."
by CNB