The cold temperatures on January 20th this year made me abandon outside projects and seek the
warmth of my den. As a result, I wound up watching hours of Inauguration Day events on TV on a day so
cold in Washington that dignitaries there also retreated indoors.
Watching the events made me recall another Inauguration Day sixty years ago when I was a first
classman at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. To take part in Lyndon Johnson’s inaugural parade, we
were bused down from our school on Long Island and lodged at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in
Maryland.
Inauguration Day in 1965 saw highs in the the mid-30’s, and though not bitter cold, it was chilly enough
for those spending hours outside in relatively light dress uniforms. I recall that some of us took old issues
of the “Stars and Stripes” and used them as insulation underneath our jackets.
When we were forming up on a side street before marching out onto Pennsylvania Avenue, four of my
classmates decided to “liberate” some no-parking signs put up specifically for the occasion. They
managed to squirrel them away on the bus and get them back to the academy.
This year, memories of that day led us to the class email site we use to stay in touch, and we heard from
the two sign-snatchers who are still alive. One posted a photo of his sign which prompted a comment that
the sign had held up better than us.
An act certainly more brazen than the sign caper was pulled off by a classmate who had a love of flying.
The night before the parade he made friends with a P-3C Orion pilot in the bar of the officers club on the
base. When the pilot invited him up on a flight the next day, my classmate immediately accepted the
invitation without any thought of the risk in missing such a significant muster.
Now deceased, he was something of a legend in the class for being the only one of us who saw the
parade from the air, but he paid dearly for that experience. Though fortunate enough not to be booted
out, he he was restricted to the academy grounds for most of the remainder of our first class year.
In looking back on Johnson’s inauguration in 1965, it’s now obvious that our nation was at a turning point.
His major escalation of American forces in Viet Nam in the summer of that year would affect the U.S. for
years to come.
In January of 1985, I was with a group of senior crew members getting familiar with a ship undergoing a
major modification in Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point Shipyard outside Baltimore, Maryland.
Four of us decided to drive down to Washington for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. We thought it
might be fun to be there for the occasion, and we particularly wanted to take a look at the Viet Nam
Veterans Memorial that had been erected about three years earlier.
Since January 20th, the normal day for inaugurations, fell on a Sunday that year, the events were to take
place on the 21st. But as that day approached, falling temperatures led to the decision to cancel all
outside events – the last time that happened before this year.

The bitter cold almost made us cancel our visit, but we really wanted to see the Memorial Wall, and we
also reasoned that the cancellation of the parade and outside ceremonies would leave Washington free of
congestion.
That was a bad assumption, since just like this year, those who had already made plans to attend went
anyway, Hotels, bars, and restaurants were full, and parking spots were hard to find.
Since it was not the weather for a stroll, I parked my rental car as close as I could to the memorial though
I was in violation of a no-parking sign. I knew that we wouldn’t be away from the car very long and
assumed that capital cops were probably holed up in warm places.
My first assumption was correct since the single-digit temperatures didn’t encourage us to hang around,
but when we returned to the car, there was a parking ticket on the windshield. It certainly made me
remember the parking sign incident of twenty years earlier.
It could be said that 1985 was another pivotal year in history. Reagan had already begun rebuilding our
military in his first term, and the arms race he initiated in his second term strained the already fractured
Soviet economy and played a role in the ultimate collapse of the USSR.
As I sat in front of the TV on this cold Inauguration Day, I realized that I was witnessing another turning
point in our country’s history, and I didn’t have to be concerned about marching or parking – just had to
bring in enough seasoned hickory to keep my buck stove hot.