Obama’s inauguration worth a trip to D.C.

Raleigh Littles missed the election of Barack Obama. He was unconscious in a Fontana hospital and didn’t find out until weeks later that the country had elected its first black president.

Now, despite his best-laid plans, Littles will miss out on attending the inauguration next week. The 70-year-old Texas native is still recovering at home in Yucaipa from a stroke and heart attack, and is too ill to travel to Washington, D.C.

But his 12-year-old son, Raleigh Jr., will have a front row seat at the making of history. The boy is part of a national delegation of youth leaders selected by a Washington civic group to attend the inauguration and its attendant festivities.

Littles had planned to accompany his son -- a seventh-grader only recently allowed by his mother, Dolores, to walk to the school bus stop alone. But because the airline wouldn’t allow Littles to transfer his ticket to anyone else, he had two choices: let Raleigh Jr. fly across the country alone or keep him at home.

“I wasn’t about to disappoint him,” Littles told me. “This is our piece of history.”

I understand that kind of determination. Last fall I made a promise to myself: If Obama won, I would find a way to join the celebration in Washington, D.C.

The day after the election, I was on the phone with friends, discussing travel plans -- when to go, what airline, where to stay, which parties we wanted to attend. Then reality set in.

Hotel prices tripled overnight, airplane seats were quickly snapped up and inauguration tickets didn’t materialize. And the notion of traveling 3,000 miles to stand in the cold in a crowd two miles deep didn’t seem quite so exciting.

But the discomforting facts of the journey didn’t dim the dream. My e-mail basket was crammed with stories like these:

Highland Park eighth-grader Jacqueline Mendoza almost turned down a chance to go. She was invited by the Junior National Young Leaders Conference, the same group sponsoring young Raleigh Littles. But her family couldn’t afford the $3,500 for airfare, lodging, meals and tickets to events with leaders such as Al Gore and Colin Powell.

So her Nightingale Middle School science teacher David Meyerhoff donated $1,200 and collected money from other teachers. And Los Angeles Councilman Ed Reyes kicked in $1,000 from his council budget. She’s flying to D.C. today.

And single mother Shirlee Smith of Altadena borrowed warm clothes and is traveling on a “food stamp budget” with her foster daughter to fulfill the dream of a teenager “who seems to think the Obamas are her ‘real’ family.”

“People have been very supportive,” Smith said. Those who lent her coats and thermal underwear have told her, “I can’t go, but my clothes will,” she said. “It’s like everybody wants to be a part of history.”

For some, that desire is the driving force. For others, it’s a passion for Barack Obama.

Jose Medina, a history and government teacher at Poly High in Riverside, stumped for Obama in Iowa and Nevada and helped open an Obama campaign office in Riverside -- which went for the Democrat in this presidential election for the first time since Lyndon Johnson, he said.

Medina made his hotel reservations back in June, when the smart money was still on Hillary Clinton. He booked his airline tickets last summer, as soon as he returned from the Democratic convention.

As a result, he and his wife, Linda Fregoso, “are going to the inauguration and the Purple Ball on inauguration night,” he said. “And the California gala on Sunday night. Oh yeah, and I’ve got tickets to the lunch with Emily’s List,” a feminist political action group.

Gina Villegas has none of that waiting for her. She’ll arrive to a hotel room crammed with five people and no official itinerary. She too volunteered in the Obama campaign, and she and her husband, Luis Carlos Villegas III, vowed not to miss the inauguration.

“The minute he won, we both got online. I had the desktop and he had the laptop, and we were both trying to find a way there,” she told Times reporter Carla Hall.

They got plane tickets and booked a modest hotel room not far from the Mall. They don’t have tickets to the swearing-in or any of the inaugural balls. But they don’t care.

They’re traveling with their 11-month-old son, Luis Carlos’ mother and Gina’s best friend from elementary school. “But you know,” she said, “if any of my friends or family were to say ‘I’m coming, I want to be there,’ they could sleep on the floor. I’m happy so many people I love are going to be there with us.”

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I got lucky. I’ll be in Washington, D.C., when you read this, searching the city for inaugural stories, trying to talk my way into a ball . . . and trying to keep my California friends and relatives from camping out in my hotel room and disturbing my concentration.

But maybe Villegas has it right. The inauguration is not just history-making, it’s a giant celebration. And celebrations are best savored with family and friends.

Just ask Armen and Rita Dumas. They made airline reservations as soon as Obama won. But they decided to scrap their plans when they couldn’t get tickets to the swearing-in.

“We would have been stuck on the Mall with 3 million people,” Rita said. “We were willing to stand in the cold if we had tickets. But my husband said, “Three million people, no restrooms, nowhere to eat . . . let’s stay home and celebrate with friends.”

On Tuesday, they’ll host an all-day party at their Northridge home for 50 of their closest friends. They’ll serve breakfast and lunch, present a musical tribute and watch the day’s events on a big-screen TV.

And among their guests will be both their fathers -- black men ages 86 and 87.

“To watch their faces, to see their reaction to something they never believed they’d live to see . . . There’s no place, really,” she said, “I’d rather be.”

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sandy.banks@latimes.com