1/21/2009 Rix squeezes and shivers through inauguration
Under a sweatshirt that shows her allegiance to an upcoming nursing internship at Johns Hopkins University, Katie Rix wears a shirt supporting Barack Obama.
Rix took this photo from her vantage point at Tuesday's inauguration.
"I just stood there and had the feeling of 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening. I can see him. I can hear him. It's real. It's finally happening.' To be a part of that was so cool. ... The crowd cheered together. People from all walks of life, from all over the country, we were all excited. It was one thing we were all there to share."
Katie Rix thought she was well-prepared for a long outdoor stand on Tuesday.
But two T-shirts, a sweatshirt and a coat, hat and gloves, plus tights, jeans and three pairs of socks weren't enough.
She was shivering.
"I spent all those winters in Iowa and Nebraska, and it was 15 below in Omaha last week. I thought I was ready," the 21-year-old said.
Rix might've been feeling the effects of spending several hours in 20-degree temperatures, but the Carroll native said she was warmed by being among a million-plus people watching Barack Obama take the oath of office in Washington, D.C.
The daughter of Susan Rix of Carroll is a senior nursing student at Creighton University in Omaha and won two tickets to the Obama inauguration in a lottery by U.S. Rep. Steve King's office.
Rix, a 2005 Carroll High grad, flew to D.C. on Saturday and attended the ceremony with friends who reside in Baltimore, Md.
They'd considered heading into Washington in the early morning hours but left around 7:30 a.m.
"It was weird," Rix said in a telephone interview this morning. "There were only like 10 people on the Metro (subway car). We thought 'There's no crowd. What's everyone talking about?'"
But they arrived to a packed subway platform near the National Mall and learned they'd caught the last train in for that particular line.
It took Rix and her friends an hour to reach the street.
"Inch by inch, we moved forward. It was so packed," she said.
"At first it was uncomfortable to be with so many people. But no one had a bad attitude, no one was irritable. I mean, there was singing and dancing going on. That was incredible to me."
Rix reached her place in the silver section about three hours before Obama uttered the words "I do solemnly swear ..."
"It was about the farthest you could be from the podium with a ticket, but at least we had tickets," said Rix. "There were hundreds of thousands of people (without tickets) standing at the fences behind us.
She guessed she stood 100 to 150 yards from the new president.
"I couldn't make out individual people (on stage) unless someone was speaking."
But seeing and hearing the inauguration wasn't a problem, as there were a giant TV screen and speakers close to Rix's position.
Rix, an Obama supporter who attended a rally at Carroll Bowl on New Year's Eve 2007 and shook now-first-lady Michelle Obama's hand when she was stumping at Crossroads Bistro a few days later, said witnessing the swearing-in was "so amazing."
"I just stood there and had the feeling of 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening. I can see him. I can hear him. It's real. It's finally happening.' To be a part of that was so cool."
Rix said hearing Obama's 20-minute inaugural address was better than watching him assume the presidency.
"The crowd cheered together. People from all walks of life, from all over the country, we were all excited. It was one thing we were all there to share."
Rix said her chills got worse when the speech was over and the million folks in the throng started to move out.
"It was unbelievably cold. We were all physically shivering," she said.
With this crowd, forget trying to get on the Metro train, they thought. So Rix and her friends warmed up at the workplace of a friend in a Senate office building.
Then it was a 40-minute walk home.
"The worst part was getting through the crowd at the National Mall," she said. "A lot of the trains weren't even in service. It was much quicker to walk."
The congestion was so bad that when they saw a minivan get clipped by a transit bus, shattering one of the van's windows, the driver didn't even stop.
The inauguration was an exciting start to the next chapter of Katie's life. She begins a preceptorship - an internship program for nursing - at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore a week from today.
For the next three months, Rix will spend 24 to 36 hours a week following nurses in the university hospital's bone marrow transplant unit.
"It's going to be a really intense program to improve my job skills," she said. "I'm very excited."
Rix will return to Creighton in April, then graduate with a bachelor's degree in nursing.
She expects to be offered a job at Johns Hopkins and might study toward a doctorate and become a nurse practitioner.
A nursing career was last on her mind when she was attending Carroll High.
"I took a class to become a certified nurse assistant, and after what I saw I told myself I'd never become a nurse," she said. "But I love science and I love helping people. I was in the honors program at Creighton, and one day found myself talking to the dean of the nursing school and realized that's what I wanted to do.
"Now I'm enthralled with my nursing major. I know that now I'm exactly where I want to be, that this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and it's absolutely wonderful."
