www.roanoke.com

It was a Democrat’s day in a Republican city.

At Mac & Bob’s in Salem, more than a dozen large TVs were tuned to Fox News Channel, with extra wait staff on hand in case things got busy. And as the inauguration began, fewer than 10 customers sat in the main dining room.

Hettie Barnes worked on a plate of quesadillas with two co-workers from a local insurance office.

“In Salem, there’s not going to be much celebration,” she said of a city where Sen. John McCain won all but one voting precinct in November.

The lunch hour came, couples and colleagues arrived, chatted and paid their checks. A small side room, where the TVs were off, filled up.

Exactly one table clapped and cheered. And Barnes, who wore an Obama button pinned to her vest, lingered after the ceremony ended.

“We just had a change of power,” she said. “It’s OK  for us to stop, stop to take it in.”

For millions, Tuesday was inauguration day.

For Franklin County Supervisors, it was the third Tuesday of the month, time for their monthly meeting.

Other localities, like Roanoke City, rescheduled it's regularly scheduled meeting in light of Barack Obama's swearing in and other inauguration festivities.

While Obama discussed the economy, war and what's to come for the country, Franklin County Supervisors 264 miles away discussed their own budget, zoning and what's to come for the county.

The historic event didn't go completely unnoticed.

Supervisor Bobby Thompson included the new president in his invocation and John Richardson referenced Obama's inaugural address when discussing the Center for Energy Efficient Design.

Other than that, it was business as usual in Franklin County.

-- Janelle Rucker

Some patrons at Bob's Restaurant on Walnut Avenue in Vinton watched President Obama's inauguration on television. Some didn't. They chatted about the event with Roanoke Times videographer Chris Zaluski.

Check out what they had to say.

Mary and Herman Warren of Montgomery County celebrated their personal connection to the Obama presidency by rising early Tuesday and switching on the television.

“We turned it on about 6:10 [a.m.],” Mary Warren said.

Their son, Michael Warren of Washington, D.C., served on Barack Obama's transition team.

While he and his wife, Lynn, were in Washington Tuesday, Mary and Herman Warren took care of the couple’s children, Amelia, 4, and Noah, 20 months.

“They had a lot of functions to attend,” including a dance, Mary Warren said of her son and daughter-in-law.

Mary Warren said the Obama team asked Michael Warren to serve in the administration, and he declined, preferring to continue with the D.C. consulting firm Stonebridge International.

But he did agree “to give Obama’s team three more months of help,” his mother said. Specifically, he works on lining up personnel for the U.S. Treasury Department.

Meanwhile, Mary Warren said Amelia Warren will have two new classmates at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.: Malia and Sasha Obama, who are attending the private school while they live at the White House.

Mary Warren said she was connecting with the excitement of Tuesday's activities. “I'm overwhelmed with everything that is going on,” she said cheerily.

-- Jeff Sturgeon

The cheering, chanting, screaming, clapping crowd at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg could be only described as jubilant.

Each time the movie screen featured President Barack Obama, the crowd erupted in cheers.

Lyric executive director Susan Mattingly estimated that more than 400 people attended the event at the height of the festivities around 11:30 a.m.

"I wanted to come here and be a part of the community," said Liam Byrne, 18, a senior at Blacksburg High School. "I thought it would be more special here surrounded by people."

Byrne voted for the first time in November, and voted for Obama. He attended the event with his mother, Mary Bois-Byrne, and his brother Levi Byrne, 16, and family friends Jana Ruble and Jo Brown.

"I am so thrilled by what's happening, I could hardly contain myself," said Ruble, an Obama supporter. "I've been all a-flutter for days."

-Amy Matzke-Fawcett

Watching the inauguration on TV inside Mark Farrell's sixth-grade English and reading class at Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Roanoke:

Marcus Jones: If I was there I would have some binoculars.

Devin Randolph: They would have thought you were a spy. You'd have gotten sniped.

Marcus: They'll shoot my fingers off. Boom boom.

Alex Chocklett: He hasn't even walked in yet. It's just the vice presidents.

Adam Fields: That's the White House?

Trevor Bradford: That's the Capitol.

Barack Obama walks into view.

Adam: Why's he walking so slow?

Mr. Farrell: Because this is a serious occasion.

Diane Feinstein: Welcome to the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States of America.

Signora Moore: This is happening now?

Mr. Farrell: Now.

Signora: Oh my God.

Marcus: He took my dream. I wanted to be the first black president.

- David Harrison

From her seat at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, Maxine Joiner Wright looked at the 2 million-plus people gathered in Washington and choked up.

“Just think about it: Each one of them represents a family out there. This is how far we’ve come.”

“Hold it together,” Jackie Williams said, comforting her. They were among 20 black Roanokers gathered in front of a wide-screen television in what was once a segregated school for blacks.

As the ceremony began, boxes of tissues were passed between rows.

Celebrants nodded and hugged each other and provided  call-and- response commentary to the speakers, enthusing "thank you, Lord" and "let it grow" and "yes, we can."

When Obama ended his first speech as president, 84-year-old Bob Hale put his hands in the air and shouted: “Our president! Yes!”

Like nearly everyone else in the room, Sarina Paynter wept. “I remember what it is to get on the bus and have to fight.” She recalled her nephew playing basketball on an integrated team — but never getting the ball passed to him because he was black.

As a college student at Virginia State University, Paynter had to study with hand-me-down textbooks from the University of Virginia. “I know the struggles. I remember daddy telling me to get an education ‘cause can’t nobody take what you put in your head.’

“We’ve come so far,” Paynter added. “Now we have to pray so hard.”

For the first time in his 80-plus years, Bob Hale said he sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and really meant it. “Finally, we are really more American than we are African now,” Hale said.

“I won’t forget the struggles we went through to get here, but right now I feel more American than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

— Beth Macy

More than 300 children paraded from the school to a nearby church to watch the inauguration. The school has no auditorium or wide-screen TV, so neighboring Valley View Wesleyan Church opened its doors to the kids.

"Thank you for walking with grace and courtesy," principal Kathleen Tate said as students poured out the front door into the 30-degree day.

The pre-kindergarten through second-grade students wore hand-made construction paper hats, carried posters and flags, blew party horns and shook various noisemakers as they "marched" about 300 yards to the church. Susan Duhon's second-grade class made a flag by using red hand prints for stripes and thumb prints for stars. One boy had written on his paper hat, "We have the best president ever baby!"

Inside the church, the students were well-behaved as they watched the inauguration ceremonies patiently. They applauded heartily when they got their first look at Barack Obama on the church's wide, pull-down screen. Whenever the crowd applauded on TV, the children clapped, too.

Following the ceremony, the students rose from the pews and sang along with "The Star-Spangled Banner," before making a return trip to the school.

- Ralph Berrier

When Chief Justice John Roberts said "Congratulations, Mr. President," after administering the oath of office to Barack Obama, New Image barbershop owner Charles Johnson couldn't help but smile.

"I, like most Americans, think this is a historic event. I also thought that I'd never live to see this historic event," Johnson said.

Johnson spent the beginning of his career cutting the hair of Virginia Tech cadets at the school's barbershop. The rules of the shop were different then and he was strictly instructed to cut black students' hair before the shop open ed and after it close d, but never during business hours.

One day, Johnson said he became fed up and announced that blacks would receive haircuts during regular hours, like everyone else. When he opened his own shop in Blacksburg in 1974, he said he made a point of welcoming everyone, and hired whites and women as staff.

Johnson said he wasn't convinced that Obama had a chance at winning until Sen. Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race for president. This was a memorable day due to prejudice he's experienced in his lifetime, Johnson said.

- Lerone Graham

Virginia Tech students, staff and faculty filled up the 500 seats in the Commonwealth Ballroom of the Squires Student Center by about 11:45 a.m. for an inauguration viewing party organized as part of Martin Luther King Jr. week at the university. The room was adorned with red, white and blue balloons and stars. People in the audience munched on popcorn as they awaited the swearing in ceremony.

Woody Farrar -- a black, 59-year-old history professor -- was one of the first to grab a seat. Unlike many blacks of his generation, Farrar said he fully expected to see the day when a black person would be president of the United States. He even bet a friend a dinner that Obama would win the presidency back at the start of the Democratic primary.

"I actually thought it would happen sooner," he said, recalling his hopes for the Rev. Jesse Jackson 20 years ago.

Farrar's optimism comes from his own experiences. Born in a segregated wing of a hospital at the University of Maryland, he went on to become an officer in the U.S. Navy. His father, whom Farrar is named after, grew up in Virginia and wasn't even afforded a high school education. He became a barber.

"When I was a naval officer I had white men as old as my daddy salute me and call me ‘sir,' he said. "Now I'm a tenured associate professor at Virginia Tech. If that's not progress, I don't know what is."

But Farrar's expectations didn't diminish his appreciation for the historic significance of the day.

"The ceiling that suppressed all black folks now seems to have been lifted," he said.

- Greg Esposito